Navigating the Coffee Market: Insights from the Specialty Coffee Expo 2024 (2) Markets, Prices & Sustainable Business Practices
At the recent Specialty Coffee Expo in Chicago, our colleagues Belen and Winnie took a deep dive into the US specialty coffee scene, uncovering the trends that will shape 2024 and beyond.
Now let’s shift gear with Belen, who covered the industry talks on markets, prices and sustainable business practices. So here’s what she learnt:
From Exporters to Roasters, Success is in the brew.
Roasting coffee at origin is increasingly recognized as a strategy to diversify revenues and achieve better prices. Many cooperatives and exporters are investing in training their staff in roasting techniques and launching lines of roasted coffees to promote local consumption of high-quality coffees. The long vision is clear: developing a local specialty coffee market may be the key to compensate for the lack of fair prices and fair trading terms that they face in export markets.
Closing the Gap of Coffee Education & Market Access.
There remains a noticeable gap in education targeted towards market access within the coffee industry. Once again, the emphasis at events such as the Coffee Quality Institute Luncheon and Fairtrade International Golden Cup revolves on green coffee analysis, cupping, processing techniques. However, there is a lack of focus on crucial aspects such as mastering trading strategies, branding & marketing techniques for green coffee. While initiatives like Green Coffee Connect hold promise, exporters express little confidence in their ability to translate leads into concrete business opportunities post-Expo. Nevertheless, many acknowledge that participation in coffee events like the Expo yields the highest return on investment compared to other marketing endeavors they pursue.
The Sustainability Divide is Huge
Key industry traders and roasters (you know who they are!) prioritize technical assistance projects at origin while emphasizing long-term relationships. And yet they fall short in addressing the issue of better prices for cooperatives and exporters, and defining living income resulting from long-term interventions. Only a single voice from the traders pack highlighted the importance of access to finance for exporters. But overall, the traders talk are in stark contrast with what cooperative leaders and exporters were discussing on the trade floor, specifically:
Need for fair pricing and transparency,
Better access to finance and working capital
Providing credit to farmers
Access to funding to comply with regulations such as EUDR
Specialty Coffee Expo was an intense three days, but we are glad that our team was able to capture the most important takeaways.
If you were in Chicago, what was the most memorable learning? Share with us!
In our next episode, we'll take stock of what we learned in Chicago and predict the top market trends for 2025.