MILAN – Kaffea-X is targeting June 1st, 2025 as launch date for the platform. The main objective of this new market utility is to bring pricing transparency via open market-based pricing discovery mechanisms and a rationalized product classification taxonomy that allows coffees to be grouped and identified by their price-determining attributes.
The platform will also be the first in the industry to provide green coffee buyers and sellers with protection against credit risk posed by each-other by introducing a third-party escrow account service for the settlement process.
Kaffeea-X: What are the services of this platform and to whom is it addressed?
Paulo Peres Chief Executive Officer: “Kaffea-X will function as an open market online platform, allowing buyers and sellers – from farmers to roasters of all sizes, wherever in the world they maybe – to make open bids and offers on specific coffees, all of which will be live posted on the platform and available to all participants;. i.e., open bid-offer and quantities for any given coffee on the platform.
Sellers and buyers will list offers and bid on listing anonymously. Kaffea-X will protect the identities of the seller and buyer will only be made known to the other party when an automated standard spot agreement is executed by the parties. A standard spot agreement will be sent to each party when a bid matches an offer (or vice-versa) for any given coffee posted on the platform.”
What are the numbers in the specialty industry globally?
“Here’s some stats, part of our initial research:
What are the benefits for those joining Kaffea-X and at what cost do you join the network?
“An ongoing and, as yet unsatisfactorily resolved problem in the specialty coffee industry is that of fair-trade. As a matter of first principles first, there can be no fair-trade without true and real-time price transparency. Any of the solutions attempted to date, from reporting of pricing action from previous years (by a small number of participants, on an average basis no less), to expensive and complex fair-trade certification processes, are not addressing the main issue which is the lack of real-time price information in an organized form.
By joining the platform, each user will be able to not only see real-time price action as well as other risk data and information but will be able to trade on those prices in a live double-action auction.
In addition to real-time information, benefits will include the mitigation of credit risk from the trade settlement process by depositing in an escrow account at time of trade confirmation, the use of automated standard spot contracts trading, automated notification to logistics partners, global reach to the community in one place, visibility into available global inventories, traceability of each coffee on the platform, independent quality certification by unrelated entities, and access to historical data never before available. All in one place. And for buyers, sellers and hedgers, live market data and risk management statistics will also be available with the best possible analytics.
As for the cost of the subscription service, while we have not yet finalized numbers, but we know now it will be a tiered subscription fee based on the type of subscriber and their primary uses of the platform. But as a matter of principle, we want to make it accessible and affordable to everyone.”
How many players have you involved so far?
“A number of active specialty coffee buyers and sellers have expressed interest in being on the platform when it goes live.”
What does the existence of Kaffea-x mean for end consumers?
“With price and inventory transparency available to the whole ecosystem of specialty coffee, and as service adoption grows we expect more stable spreads-over-“C” (premium) on all specialty coffee products. That means less volatility for the roasters and consequently to the end-consumer market.”
What are the next steps in your project?
“The main engine is under-development and if we have a beta version (as expected) by April 10th we will then start UAT testing with the committed participants to identify solve any kinks in the process. We will continue to build our team moving forward and are looking forward to our participation in the Houston Specialty Coffee Expo in late April where we hope to meet and greet members of the community and present the project to them.”
