The Royal Blog

The global coffee market has entered uncharted territory. Tight inventories, Brazil tariffs, and U.S.–Colombia trade tensions are pushing C-market prices higher and sustaining extreme backwardation. Learn what it means for roasters and buyers.

Article Summary: Global coffee markets face major uncertainty driven by Brazil’s August frost, 50% U.S. tariffs on Brazilian imports, and ongoing spot coffee scarcity. The frost’s full impact on the 2026 harvest remains unknown, heightening volatility. Tariffs have inflated costs and redirected demand to other origins like Colombia, Peru, and Indonesia, pushing premiums higher. Spot […]

Time Keeps on Slipping…into the Future The C Market is finally starting to come under some selling pressure, but there is still a large area of support at the 215.00 to 220.00 area. It would be premature to assume the market can or should break much lower than that in the near term. Remember: we […]

As of this writing, the price of the most actively traded NY coffee futures contract (SEP23) sits at 155.80.  This is a 24 percent drop from the 6-month high of 205.25.  It is worth looking back over the past half year to see how we ended up at this level and also to better understand […]

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 C”). Since peaking at $2.30/lb on September […]

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 are about to reach […]

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 high due to the pandemic. In Kenya specifically, movement of people […]

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 parchment over the […]

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, although it remains […]