A cold start to the northern hemisphere winter has threatened to unsettle a "precarious" balance in the world coffee market by spurring demand for the bean, sector experts have said.

The International Coffee Organisation, in its first forecast for world coffee demand this year, said consumption "should exceed" 130m bags, a rise of at least 1m bags year on year, although it was unclear as yet whether 2008's record of 130.6m tonnes would be reached.

However, chances had been improved by the cold start to winter in Europe and the US, and forecasts of further freezes to come, expectations which have also boosted oil prices.

"The expectation of an exceptionally hard winter in many consuming countries this year could help to increase an already buoyant world consumption level," the organisation said.

Prospects were particularly strong for Eastern Europe, where cold weather has claimed more than 50 lives this month in Poland alone, and where rising prosperity and "lifestyle choices" were already boosting consumption, an ICO spokesman told Agrimoney.com.

Cold weather link

Observations between the link between cold weather and increased coffee drinking stem from Europe in 1990, when a "seriously cold" winter sparked to an increase in the region's consumption.

Recently European Union coffee drinking has been on a downward trend, dropping from 41.1m bags in 2006 to 38.6m bags last year.

People drink coffee in chill conditions to "warm up and stay alert", the ICO spokesman said.

However, the prospect of a winter fillip to coffee consumption comes at a time when poor weather is hampering production in many major producing states.

In Central America, all countries, bar Honduras and Nicaragua, are "affected by higher than normal rainfall combined with high production costs", the organisation said, also singling out a third year of weather "problems" in Colombia, the second-biggest producer of arabica beans.

'Extremely nervous and tight'

In Vietnam, the main producer of robusta coffee, "the combined effects of climate chant and El Nino has led to irregularities in rainfall distribution patterns", following up drought with heavy rains.

In Indonesia the La Nina pattern "is bringing heavy rains and also threatening coffee production".

While keeping its estimate for 2010-11 coffee output at 133m bags, the ICO highlighted that "the market continues to be extremely nervous and tight".

"The shortage of high-quality arabicas, the delay in harvesting collection and distribution, caused by unfavourable weather conditions and the low level of world stocks have led to the precariousness of the supply-demand balance."