Royal Coffee’s Inbound Traffic Specialist, Jodi Louws, shares her thoughts on market forces that will affect shipping costs in 2023. TLDR; Shipping costs are not back to pre-pandemic lows, and we do not expect them to be. Freight rates are improving, but not “plunging”, and low East –West rates...
Wild gyrations in the coffee market, and how to cope. If you’ve been watching the coffee market recently, you are doubtless aware of the massive decline in coffee futures prices on the Intercontinental Commodity Exchange (“ICE”, colloquially still known as the “New York ‘C’ Market,” or just “the...
I think I first met Neel Vohora in Chicago in a blizzard during the winter of 2008. He wore khaki shorts and a Stetson style hat and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all. Neel and I have spent a little more time together since that day nearly a decade ago, kicking around his family’s farms...
OK, the truth is that we’ve been receiving Ethiopian coffees for months now, but unless you are booking forward with us, you’ve likely not seen many, if any, available on our SPOT Offering List. This is because they’ve all been selling out in advance of arrival, or shortly thereafter. Happily, we...
Editor's note: This update was a collaborative effort between Caitlin McCarthy-García, Max Nicholas-Fulmer, and Charlie Habegger. On a global level, weather patterns in Brazil brought doubt to the world's coffee supply in mid-2021; while in Kenya, labor and input costs on the farm remained ever...
This year Royal is partnering with CafExporto to bring some of the best coffees from Ecuador. It’s headed up by Juan Peña, a well-regarded producer from Loja in Ecuador who has won three consecutive Sprudgies for “Notable Producer”.
Editor’s note: This article first ran in Daily Coffee News on January 24, 2022, and is republished here with permission. One day last November I was working at The Crown in Oakland when I received a call from Felix Chambi Garcia, who oversees quality control and exports for Bolivia-based...
Editor’s note: This article was first published in Roast Magazine’s Sep/Oct 2021 issue, and is reprinted here with permission. Author's note: I remember the first time I talked to Felix Chambi of Cooperativa San Juan. It was a fall afternoon late in 2019; we had been texting back and forth and he...
Editor's note: A version of this article first ran on the blog in December of 2018. This year, our Sales Associate, Spencer Ford, updated the list and will be updating it throughout the season. Even in the strangest of years in recent memory, there’s at least a little comfort to the impending...
About a month ago, I discussed some factors that led to the C market's rise. Now that the C market has gone above the highs of the drought-driven market of 2014-15, I want to address our pricing specifically. While prices have increased due to freight and higher internal prices for cherry and...
Just this afternoon our colleague, Haile Andualem, in Addis Ababa has reported that a State of Emergency has been declared nationwide throughout Ethiopia, in response to the ongoing civil war in the northern Tigray region. In particular, the Amhara region directly to the south of Tigray is...
The C market, as of October 14th, is trading at $2.09/lb, back to the levels reached immediately following the frost in Minas Gerais and other coffee regions of Brazil this past July. This is in spite of nearly ideal rainfall patterns in Brazil. Drought no longer seems to be a primary concern,...
After the unprecedented challenges of 2020, the specialty coffee world faces an entirely new, though not unrelated, set of logistical hurdles in 2021. Our Director of Education, Chris Kornman, sat down with the Director of Inbound Traffic, Jodi Louws, to discuss complications currently playing out...
The New Wave of Bolivian Coffee Bolivia’s story with coffee is unique and still unfolding. This year, Royal has contracted coffees from this origin for the first time in over a decade. A new generation of coffee farmers dedicated to producing high-quality coffee are taking the stage in...
By Jodi Louws with Charlie Habegger and Bob Fulmer Global shipping delays and costs are still rising. Since October, we’ve seen consumer spending propel Chinese exports to epic highs. The TransPacific trade has been a vacuum drawing on the global supply of containers and vessel services. This...
