Volatility in the C-Market is ongoing
The main talk of the past weeks has been the rise and volatility of the C-Market and coffee prices.
While we in Specialty Coffee often mistakenly assumed we were living in a parallel universe and the commodity market was none of our business - because we paid at least double the market price for our green coffee - we have definitively been proven wrong.
Most players along the coffee value chain down from roasters, coffee shop owners to baristas have learnt more about how climate change, politics and the greater economy impact the availability, the quality and the price of Specialty Coffee in the past months than industry people before us have learnt in decades.
Many factors have come together to create a perfect storm resulting in extreme volatility but we can't close our eyes from the fact that there is less coffee available worldwide due to back-to-back years of drought in key coffee producing countries, namely Brazil.
Today the price per kg of a commercial lot of coffee (which has zero traceability of unique characteristics) sits where only a handful of years ago, you'd get the highest grade of Ethiopian coffee. Which raises the question about where Specialty Coffee is going: How much more will consumers pay for better coffee quality and/or will the quality dip because it's just not worth the extra work of meticulous sorting?
