Colombian coffee crisis?
11/05/09 12:24
Drinking coffee has never been a straight-forward matter. For one thing, there are so many styles of coffee to choose from, and then each country’s produce tastes so different. Add in the skill of the coffee roasters and the degree to which the beans are roasted, some worries about the amount of water used to process the coffee and the working conditions of the workers, and you have a real cocktail of ecological and social issues. But most of us continue to drink and enjoy our coffee regularly, probably once or twice a day.
Most people would cite Colombia as a coffee exporting nation; indeed, the mellow, rounded flavour of Colombian coffee is the benchmark by which we measure most others. If the following report is true, all of us coffee lovers may be in for a financial shock:
Coffee and sugar price hikes
Andrea Illy, chief executive of Italy's leading coffee company, has told the Financial Times that coffee prices could "explode" because of supply shortages. The crop in Colombia was damaged by heavy rains and the scarcity of supplies from the country is now "absolute", says Néstor Osorio, head of the International Coffee Organisation. Kraft, owner of the Maxwell House coffee brand, raised retail prices on its Colombian blend by almost 19 per cent last month because of the rising price of Colombian beans. Separately, sugar prices in New York and London rose last week to their highest in almost three years. Peter de Klerk at London-based sugar merchants Czarnikow said importing countries would "need to see retail prices rise to match the surge in the cost of sugar in the wholesale market".
Coffee is second most valuable commodity traded in the world in terms of volume linked to value. Stories like this do add to the troubled picture of our world’s economy.
Arabica coffee bushes in flower, shaded by surrounding trees
Most people would cite Colombia as a coffee exporting nation; indeed, the mellow, rounded flavour of Colombian coffee is the benchmark by which we measure most others. If the following report is true, all of us coffee lovers may be in for a financial shock:
Coffee and sugar price hikes
Andrea Illy, chief executive of Italy's leading coffee company, has told the Financial Times that coffee prices could "explode" because of supply shortages. The crop in Colombia was damaged by heavy rains and the scarcity of supplies from the country is now "absolute", says Néstor Osorio, head of the International Coffee Organisation. Kraft, owner of the Maxwell House coffee brand, raised retail prices on its Colombian blend by almost 19 per cent last month because of the rising price of Colombian beans. Separately, sugar prices in New York and London rose last week to their highest in almost three years. Peter de Klerk at London-based sugar merchants Czarnikow said importing countries would "need to see retail prices rise to match the surge in the cost of sugar in the wholesale market".
Coffee is second most valuable commodity traded in the world in terms of volume linked to value. Stories like this do add to the troubled picture of our world’s economy.
Arabica coffee bushes in flower, shaded by surrounding trees