MILAN – At a time of unprecedented price spikes in coffee futures, what is the trend in speciality coffee prices? Moreover, to what extent have they followed and continue to follow the evolution of the New York C price, which is traditionally the benchmark for Arabica coffee trade? A possible answer to these and other questions can be found in the 2024 Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide, which has recently been made available at this link.
The Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide is a collaborative initiative that generates relevant pricing benchmarks for differentiated coffees. These benchmarks provide an alternative for the current reliance on the volatile C-market price for price discovery.
Now in its sixth edition (Version 7.0), the guide is published at the initiative of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta (USA), and relies on data from 123 companies headquartered in countries around the world.
It summarizes information from contracts signed between October 2018 and September 2024. This period is divided into six harvest years: 2018/19 to 2023/24.
The 2024 Transaction Guide summarizes almost 105,000 contracts covering more than 2 billion pounds of green specialty coffee. Roughly two thirds of the contracts and three quarters of the volume in this six-year sample represent data from specialty coffee importers.
This creates an anonymized and aggregated dataset that provides context for coffee price negotiations based on quality scores, volumes purchased, and country of origin.
The Specialty Coffee Transaction Guides describe recent FOB price distributions, all in USD per green pound. It reports median prices when describing the middle of each market category. Lower prices and higher prices refer to the 25th and 75th percentile of prices, respectively, observed in each category.
So what has happened to green coffee reference prices? Let’s start with the average New York C price, which rose from 104 cents per pound in 2018/19 to 208 cents in 2023/24, with a peak of 225 cents in 2021/22.
The first four and a half months of 2024/25 saw a further escalation in prices to the highs of over 440 cents reached last week.
The median price for regular (80-83.9) specialty coffees sold in containers rose from $1.57 per pound in 2018/19 to $2.38 in 2023/24.
The trend was very similar to that of the New York C price. Again, the price peaked in 2021/22 at $2.66.
It is interesting to note that fancy (84+) specialty coffees sold in lot sizes smaller than 1,000 pounds have a history that is largely unrelated to that of the “C” Contract.
Starting from a significantly higher level (almost four times as much as the New York C price in 2018), they have experienced more moderate price increases, remaining broadly stable at around USD 5 per pound over the last two years under review.
Some other interesting considerations on the evolution of FOB prices
The median price for green specialty coffees increased from $3.40 per pound in 2022/23 to $3.50 in 2023/24.
Lower (i.e., 25th percentile) prices rose to $2.76 in 2023/24 from $2.45 per pound in 2022/23, while higher (i.e., 75th percentile) prices rose to $4.68 in 2023/24, a mere $0.18 per pound increase over 2022/23.
Over the most recent three harvest years, the median FOB price was $3.48, a $0.73 per pound increase over the median price in the previous three years.
In 2023/24, the median price for coffees scoring 86-87.9 was $4.38: $1.73 per pound more than the median price for coffees scoring 82-83.9 ($2.65).
As mentioned above, price fluctuations were less dramatic for higher quality coffees. The 25th percentile price for 86-87.9 coffees fell from $3.60 per pound in 2021/22 to $3.48 in 2022/23, before rising just $0.02 to $3.50 in 2023/24.
The range of prices for lower-quality coffees is lower than for higher-quality coffees. In 2023/24, 50% of the 82-83.9 coffee prices covered a range of $0.82, from $2.28 to $3.10, while 50% of the 86-87.9 coffee prices covered a range of $2.19, from $3.50 to $5.69.
Across adjacent three year periods, the median FOB price for regular specialty coffees (80-83.9 points) rose $0.70 per pound, from $2.23 (2018/19 – 2020/21) to $2.93 (2021/22 – 2023/24). For fancy specialty coffees (84+ points), the median price increased $0.75 from $3.43 to $4.18.
It is important to reiterate that the base of data used for the guide, although broad, does not include the entire market. The guide can be downloaded at this link.
Going back to futures prices, the Ice Arabica closed higher yesterday, Wednesday 19th February, on all contracts except the front month. The May contract gained 665 points to close at 411.90 cents.
In London, the May contract was marginally higher (+$25) to close at $5,746.
