Coffee is getting more expensive
For the first time since the launch of Vertical Coffee Roasters in 2017, we will be increasing the price of our year-round available coffees - Brazil Diamond, Big Wall, Breakaway and Queen K - by around 10%.
To make logistics cost more efficient, we changed our shipping policy at the beginning of this year, hoping to be able to avoid a price increase in the basic section of our portfolio. After we had decided to make this change in early November, the green coffee market has dramatically changed and has forced us to reconsider the price increase. Read on for the backstory.
What's going on?
While it has reached the mainstream media, you may or may have not heard or read about the recent increase in green coffee prices: In the second half of 2024, the Arabica Coffee Futures - which have for years sat at around 1.50 USD/lb (with fluctuations) - rapidly rose from 2.00 USD/lb to surpass the historical high point of 3.00 USD/lb from 1977 in December. This was later topped by another steep increase at the beginning of 2025, breaking the 4.00 USD/lb mark at the beginning of February and remaining comfortably above that for the past weeks.
What's the C-Market and why are prices skyrocketing?
Now the Arabica Coffee Futures are large contracts for green coffee beans (37'500lb per contract) at a standardised quality (he ones you would find in a typical supermarket coffee) for a certain date in the future (for example May 2025). These contracts are traded on the commodity stock market (C-Market) where there are several different players investing, buying and selling: Mainly trade houses, big coffee roasters, investors and speculators. As with any market, the main driving forces in price change are supply and demand, with a fair share of politics, panic and uncertainty thrown in for good measure.
What has led to the current rise of price in the C-Market? There are several factors for this, the most prominent one being two years (2023 & 2024) of too little rain in Brazil and subsequently a massively reduced crop size of the largest Arabica coffee producer in the world. With the demand for coffee rising - think of China where coffee is becoming more and more popular - this results in an imbalance of availability. Adding to this pressure are the announced tolls and tariffs on imported goods by and to the USA as well as the European Union's Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (EUDR) which should be in place from the beginning of this year but has been pushed back until 2026.
What does this mean for Specialty Coffee?
OK, but what does supermarket-quality coffee and the C-Market have to do with Specialty Coffee? Specialty Coffee has always been traded and priced based on quality and negotiated seperately, right? Well, yes. Until 2021 when - mainly due to frost in Brazil and with it a big loss in production - the C-Market exploded, and all prices came under pressure. Since then, Specialty Coffee can't be completely decoupled from the C-Market, which reflects the supply/demand equation as well as world economics and politics. And while for example the "Fair Trade" premium pays a fixed amount above the C-Market value no matter the quality, in Specialty Coffee producers are paid a negotiated extra for the plus in quality - the better the quality, the higher the premium. But the base of the negotiations remains the C-Market price.
Higher prices as a chance for producers and consumers
On the bright side, stable higher prices can be a chance especially for future generations of coffee producers who may otherwise consider giving up farming for more comfortable work in the city. Higher prices will also force us to view coffee not as a cheap caffeine kick but a valuable and luxurious good that is produced with great care and craftmanship. But as mentioned, stability and predictability are key for a sustainable change.
What remains at the moment, is volatility and unpredictability for all players in the value chain. Not only for us as buyers of green coffee but especially at farm or cooperative level. When supply is low, well, there’s not much coffee to sell, even when the price is high. The price change comes with its own set of challenges.
And like everywhere there is a chaos phase until there hopefully comes a certain balance to go forward and make the right decisions for the long term.
We'll keep on sourcing and roasting tasty coffee
For now (and the future!), we are happy to have you as a valued and happy customer! As always, we are doing our best as the link in the value chain that turns great green coffee into tasty beans ready to be ground and brewed, highlighting all the careful steps and hard work that went into every bean.
Please reach out to us if you have any questions, we are happy to answer them to the best of our knowledge!
PS: If you'd like to dig deeper into the topic, you can follow up with this great video
