Latest news with #arabica
RNZ News
16 hours ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Are coffee prices heading down? Don't hold your breath
Photo: Public domain Global coffee prices might have fallen but there's a warning that it might not mean you pay any less in your local cafe. RaboResearch data shows arabica coffee prices dropped 17 percent in the last three months and robusta, often used to make instant coffee, dropped 30 percent. It said this was due to improved production forecasts and diminishing demand. Global coffee demand is expected to drop 0.5 percent in 2025. A surplus of 1.4 million bags is projected for the 2025/26 year, primarily in arabicas. RaboResearch then also forecasts a much bigger surplus the following year, particularly if Brazilian weather is normal. Photo: Unsplash Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said the price declines were encouraging but did not necessarily mean New Zealanders would see coffee prices fall. "Given the full increase in global coffee prices hasn't fully hit Kiwis' morning caffeine hit yet there might not be real relief for New Zealand coffee prices." He said while World Bank data showed arabica coffee prices were down 3.1 percent in May from the peak in February they were still 2.3 times the May 2019 price. Robusta was down 9.8 percent from the peak but the same margin up on 2019. "Stats NZ data shows that instant coffee prices in May 2025 were 14 percent higher than a year ago, and only 36 percent higher than in 2019 - so less than a tenth of global coffee price pressure has hit directly. With not as much of the original hit from coffee prices hitting local prices, we might not see a lot of relief. If anything, forward ordering of coffee means we might still see further price increases trickle through as beans are imported after being ordered before recent price falls. "Café operators have clearly been trying to absorb as much of coffee price rises as they can to limit how many people might stop buying at higher prices. Stats NZ data also shows takeaway coffee prices are up just 3.8 percent per year in May, despite the large increases in both coffee and dairy prices, suggesting cafes are taking the hit on their margins rather than pass price increases on as much." Café and roastery owner Richard Corney, of Flight Coffee and The Hangar, has been warning that retail coffee prices are unsustainably low. He said if prices had kept up with the increase in café costs in recent years, a flat white would be selling for $7 .
Bloomberg
17-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Illy CEO Sees Coffee Extending Slide on Ample Supply Projections
Italian roaster Illycaffe SpA expects the cost of coffee beans to continue to fall, helping to shield customers from further hikes following a run-up in prices. The family-owned firm, known for the high-end espresso it sells in silver-and-red tins, raised prices twice this year after supply fears drove up the cost of arabica. The beans are now trading only slightly above levels seen at the start of the year, amid strong production forecasts.
Globe and Mail
10-06-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Coffee Prices Rebound on Strength in the Brazilian Real
July arabica coffee (KCN25) today is up +3.20 (+0.89%), and July ICE robusta coffee (RMN25) is up +70 (+1.58%). Coffee prices today shook off early losses and moved higher on strength in the Brazilian real. The real (^USDBRL) climbed to an 8-month high against the dollar today, discouraging export selling from Brazil's coffee producers. Coffee prices today initially moved lower after above-normal rainfall in Brazil eased dryness concerns. Somar Meteorologia reported today that Brazil's biggest arabica coffee growing area of Minas Gerais, received 23.4 mm of rain the week ended June 7, 207% of the historical average for this time of year. Coffee harvest pressures in Brazil are limiting the upside in coffee prices after Safras & Mercado reported that Brazil's 2025/26 coffee harvest was 28% complete as of June 4, just above the five-year average of 27% for the same time of year. Coffee prices have been under pressure over the five weeks, with arabica coffee falling to a 2-month low last Tuesday and robusta dropping to a 7-1/4 month low due to concerns about higher coffee production and ample supplies. On May 19, the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) forecast that Brazil's 2025/26 coffee production will increase by 0.5% year-over-year (y/y) to 65 million bags and that Vietnam's 2025/26 coffee output will rise by 6.9% y/y to 31 million bags. Brazil is the world's largest producer of arabica coffee, and Vietnam is the world's largest producer of robusta coffee. An increase in ICE coffee inventories is undercutting coffee prices. ICE-monitored robusta coffee inventories rose to an 8-3/4 month of 5,438 lots on May 30. Also, ICE-monitored arabica coffee inventories rose to a 4-1/4 month high of 892,468 bags on May 27. On May 9, the USDA forecasted that 2025/26 coffee production in Honduras, Central America's largest coffee producer, would climb +5.1% y/y to 5.8 million bags. Also, consulting firm Safras & Mercado raised its Brazil 2025/26 coffee production estimate to 65.51 million bags from an earlier estimate of 62.45 million bags. In addition, Conab, Brazil's crop forecasting agency, raised its Brazil 2025 coffee production estimate to 55.7 million bags from a January estimate of 51.81 million bags. Demand concerns are bearish for coffee prices. Several global commodity importers, including Starbucks, Hershey, and Mondelez International, recently said the US's baseline 10% tariff on imports would raise prices and further pressure sales volumes. Smaller coffee exports from Brazil are bullish for prices. On May 12, Cecafe reported that Brazil's April green coffee exports fell -28% y/y to 3.05 million bags, and Jan-Apr coffee exports fell -15.5% y/y to 13.186 million bags. Robusta coffee has support from reduced robusta production. Due to drought, Vietnam's coffee production in the 2023/24 crop year dropped by -20% to 1.472 MMT, the smallest crop in four years. Also, Vietnam's General Statistics Office reported that 2024 Vietnam coffee exports fell -17.1% y/y to 1.35 MMT. Last Tuesday, Vietnam's National Statistics Office reported that Vietnam's 2025 Vietnam's Jan-May coffee exports are down -1.8% y/y to 813,000 MT. In addition, the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association on March 12 cut its 2024/25 Vietnam coffee production estimate to 26.5 million bags from a December estimate of 28 million bags. Conversely, the USDA's FAS on May 19 projected that Vietnam's 2025/26 coffee crop would climb +7% y/y to a 4-year high of 30 million bags. The USDA's biannual report on December 18 was mixed for coffee prices. The USDA's Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) projected that world coffee production in 2024/25 will increase +4.0% y/y to 174.855 million bags, with a +1.5% increase in arabica production to 97.845 million bags and a +7.5% increase in robusta production to 77.01 million bags. The USDA's FAS forecasts that 2024/25 ending stocks will fall by -6.6% to a 25-year low of 20.867 million bags from 22.347 million bags in 2023/24. Separately, the USDA's FAS on November 22 projected Brazil's 2024/25 coffee production at 66.4 MMT, below its previous forecast of 69.9 MMT. The USDA's FAS projects Brazil's coffee inventories at 1.2 million bags at the end of the 2024/25 season in June, down -26% y/y. For the 2025/26 marketing year, Volcafe on December 17 cut its 2025/26 Brazil arabica coffee production estimate to 34.4 million bags, down by about 11 million bags from a September estimate after a crop tour revealed the severity of an extended drought in Brazil. Volcafe projects a global 2025/26 arabica coffee deficit of -8.5 million bags, wider than the -5.5 million bag deficit for 2024/25 and the fifth consecutive year of deficits.
Asharq Al-Awsat
10-05-2025
- Business
- Asharq Al-Awsat
In Coffee-Producing Uganda, an Emerging Sisterhood Wants More Women Involved
Meridah Nandudu envisioned a coffee sisterhood in Uganda, and the strategy for expanding it was simple: Pay a higher price per kilogram when a female grower took the beans to a collection point. It worked. More and more men who typically made the deliveries allowed their wives to go instead. Nandudu´s business group now includes more than 600 women, up from dozens in 2022. That´s about 75% of her Bayaaya Specialty Coffee´s pool of registered farmers in this mountainous area of eastern Uganda that produces prized arabica beans and sells to exporters. "Women have been so discouraged by coffee in a way that, when you look at (the) coffee value chain, women do the donkey work," Nandudu said. But when the coffee is ready for selling, men step in to claim the proceeds. Her goal is to reverse that trend in a community where coffee production is not possible without women's labor. Uganda is one of Africa´s top two coffee producers, and the crop is its leading export. The east African country exported more than 6 million bags of coffee between September 2023 and August 2024, accounting for $1.3 billion in earnings, according to the Uganda Coffee Development Authority. The earnings have been rising as production dwindles in Brazil, the world´s top coffee producer, which faces unfavorable drought conditions. In Sironko district, where Nandudu grew up in a remote village near the Kenya border, coffee is the community's lifeblood. As a girl, when she was not at school, she helped her mother and other women look after acres of coffee plants. They usually planted, weeded and toiled with the post-harvest routine that includes pulping, fermenting, washing and drying the coffee. The harvest season was known to coincide with a surge in cases of domestic violence, she said. Couples fought over how much of the earnings that men brought home from sales - and how much they didn't. "When (men) go and sell, they are not accountable. Our mothers cannot ask, `We don´t have food at home. You sold coffee. Can you pay school fees for this child?´" she said. Years later, Nandudu earned her degree in the social sciences from Uganda´s top public university in 2015, with her father funding her education from coffee earnings. She had the idea to launch a company that would prioritize the needs of coffee-producing women in the country's conservative society. She thought of her project as a kind of sisterhood and chose "bayaaya" - a translation in the Lumasaba language - for her company's name. It launched in 2018, operating like others that buy coffee directly from farmers and process it for export. But Bayaaya is unique in Mbale, the largest city in eastern Uganda, for focusing on women and for initiatives such as a cooperative saving society that members can contribute to and borrow from. For small-holder Ugandan farmers in remote areas, a small movement in the price of a kilogram of coffee is a major event. The decision to sell to one or another middleman often hinges on small price differences. A decade ago, the price of coffee bought by a middleman from a Ugandan farmer was roughly 8,000 Uganda shillings, or just over $2 at today´s exchange rate. Now the price is roughly $5. Nandudu adds an extra 200 shillings to the price of every kilogram she buys from a woman. It´s enough of an incentive that more women are joining. Another benefit is a small bonus payment during the off-season from February to August. That motivates many local men "to trust their women to sell coffee," Nandudu said. "When a woman sells coffee, she has a hand in it." Nandudu´s group has many collection points across eastern Uganda, and women trek to them at least twice a week. Men are not turned away. Selling as a Bayaaya member has fostered teamwork as her family collectively decides how to spend coffee earnings, said Linet Gimono, who joined the group in 2022. And with assured earnings, she´s able to afford the "small things" she often needs as a woman. "I can buy soap (and) I can buy sugar without pulling ropes with my husband over it," she said. Another member, Juliet Kwaga, said her mother never would have thought of collecting coffee earnings because her father was very much in charge. Now, Kwaga's husband, with a bit of encouragement, is comfortable sending her. "At the end of the day I go home with something to feed my family, to support my children," she said. In Sironko district, home to more than 200,000 people, coffee trees dot the hilly terrain. Much of the farming is on plots of one or two acres, although some families have larger tracts. Many farmers don´t usually drink coffee, and some have never tasted it. Some women smiled in embarrassment when asked what it tasted like. But things are slowly changing. Routine coffee drinkers are emerging among younger women in the coffee business in urban areas, including at a roasting place in Mbale where most employees are women. Phoebe Nabutale, who helps oversee quality assurance for Darling Coffee, was raised in a family of coffee growers. She bent over the roaster, smelling the beans until she got the aroma she wanted. Many of her girlfriends, she said, regularly ask how they can break into the coffee business, as roasters or otherwise. For Nandudu, who aims to start exporting beans, that's progress. Now there are more women in "coffee as a business," she said.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
In coffee-producing Uganda, an emerging sisterhood wants more women involved
SIRONKO, Uganda (AP) — Meridah Nandudu envisioned a coffee sisterhood in Uganda, and the strategy for expanding it was simple: Pay a higher price per kilogram when a female grower took the beans to a collection point. It worked. More and more men who typically made the deliveries allowed their wives to go instead. Nandudu's business group now includes more than 600 women, up from dozens in 2022. That's about 75% of her Bayaaya Specialty Coffee's pool of registered farmers in this mountainous area of eastern Uganda that produces prized arabica beans and sells to exporters. 'Women have been so discouraged by coffee in a way that, when you look at (the) coffee value chain, women do the donkey work,' Nandudu said. But when the coffee is ready for selling, men step in to claim the proceeds. Her goal is to reverse that trend in a community where coffee production is not possible without women's labor. Uganda is one of Africa's top two coffee producers, and the crop is its leading export. The east African country exported more than 6 million bags of coffee between September 2023 and August 2024, accounting for $1.3 billion in earnings, according to the Uganda Coffee Development Authority. The earnings have been rising as production dwindles in Brazil, the world's top coffee producer, which faces unfavorable drought conditions. In Sironko district, where Nandudu grew up in a remote village near the Kenya border, coffee is the community's lifeblood. As a girl, when she was not at school, she helped her mother and other women look after acres of coffee plants. They usually planted, weeded and toiled with the post-harvest routine that includes pulping, fermenting, washing and drying the coffee. The harvest season was known to coincide with a surge in cases of domestic violence, she said. Couples fought over how much of the earnings that men brought home from sales — and how much they didn't. 'When (men) go and sell, they are not accountable. Our mothers cannot ask, 'We don't have food at home. You sold coffee. Can you pay school fees for this child?'' she said. Years later, Nandudu earned her degree in the social sciences from Uganda's top public university in 2015, with her father funding her education from coffee earnings. She had the idea to launch a company that would prioritize the needs of coffee-producing women in the country's conservative society. She thought of her project as a kind of sisterhood and chose 'bayaaya" — a translation in the Lumasaba language — for her company's name. It launched in 2018, operating like others that buy coffee directly from farmers and process it for export. But Bayaaya is unique in Mbale, the largest city in eastern Uganda, for focusing on women and for initiatives such as a cooperative saving society that members can contribute to and borrow from. For small-holder Ugandan farmers in remote areas, a small movement in the price of a kilogram of coffee is a major event. The decision to sell to one or another middleman often hinges on small price differences. A decade ago, the price of coffee bought by a middleman from a Ugandan farmer was roughly 8,000 Uganda shillings, or just over $2 at today's exchange rate. Now the price is roughly $5. Nandudu adds an extra 200 shillings to the price of every kilogram she buys from a woman. It's enough of an incentive that more women are joining. Another benefit is a small bonus payment during the off-season from February to August. That motivates many local men 'to trust their women to sell coffee,' Nandudu said. 'When a woman sells coffee, she has a hand in it.' Nandudu's group has many collection points across eastern Uganda, and women trek to them at least twice a week. Men are not turned away. Selling as a Bayaaya member has fostered teamwork as her family collectively decides how to spend coffee earnings, said Linet Gimono, who joined the group in 2022. And with assured earnings, she's able to afford the "small things' she often needs as a woman. 'I can buy soap (and) I can buy sugar without pulling ropes with my husband over it,' she said. Another member, Juliet Kwaga, said her mother never would have thought of collecting coffee earnings because her father was very much in charge. Now, Kwaga's husband, with a bit of encouragement, is comfortable sending her. 'At the end of the day I go home with something to feed my family, to support my children," she said. In Sironko district, home to more than 200,000 people, coffee trees dot the hilly terrain. Much of the farming is on plots of one or two acres, although some families have larger tracts. Many farmers don't usually drink coffee, and some have never tasted it. Some women smiled in embarrassment when asked what it tasted like. But things are slowly changing. Routine coffee drinkers are emerging among younger women in the coffee business in urban areas, including at a roasting place in Mbale where most employees are women. Phoebe Nabutale, who helps oversee quality assurance for Darling Coffee, was raised in a family of coffee growers. She bent over the roaster, smelling the beans until she got the aroma she wanted. Many of her girlfriends, she said, regularly ask how they can break into the coffee business, as roasters or otherwise. For Nandudu, who aims to start exporting beans, that's progress. Now there are more women in 'coffee as a business,' she said. ___ For more on Africa and development: The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
