December 2024 Newsletter
As we do every year, we’ll be taking a couple weeks off over Christmas and New Years. Our closure dates are as follows:
Final orders and shipping day for this year is Thursday, the 19th of December, 2024.
We’ll be reopening the order pages on Tuesday, the 7th of January, 2025.
We’ll start shipping orders out from Wednesday, the 8th of January, 2025.
As usual, we’ll be running down stocks before we close for the year, so get your order in early if you don’t want to miss out on something specific.
In broader coffee news, the global coffee markets are currently in turmoil, mostly due to problems in the two largest coffee producing countries (Brazil and Vietnam). Most notably, drought in Brazil has severely affected the yields from growing regions, and storms have delayed the Vietnamese Robusta harvest, which combined with poor agricultural practices, labour problems and shipping issues across the board have resulted in less coffee available on a worldwide basis.
This has driven green coffee prices up to almost double where they were a couple of years ago. For Australia, it has increased the cost and reduced the supply of many coffees from other countries as well. As an example, there has been no Ethiopian Harar shipped to Australia this year, and it’s looking unlikely that we’ll be getting any in the first half of 2025. We’ve been operating from stock reserves that are now almost completely gone.
Coffee from the Harar region is generally going to international buyers with deeper pockets and shorter shipping routes, but there has been some limited supply from other the other growing regions of Ethiopia.
Fret not, however, as we’ve been doing the cupping work and we’ve found some excellent replacements for some of our core range.
Costa Rica Don Senel will be replacing the Costa Rica Tarrazzu (available now).
Ethiopia Guji Suke Kuto will be replacing Ethiopian Harar (available early 2025).
PNG Simbu Premium will be replacing PNG Tungei Peaberry (available now).
Best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season!
Marc & Alan