MILAN – The 2023 Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide was released in January 2024 and is now available for download. Each annual Transaction Guide is the result of a combined effort of a dedicated research team from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School along with more than 100 coffee companies and organizations that donate information from more than 50,000 coffee contracts.
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 Transaction Guide is a useful tool for both sellers and buyers of differentiated green coffees who want to see increased equity and economic sustainability within their supply streams.
The aim of the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide
There are big questions facing specialty coffee producers and buyers. According to numerous studies conducted throughout the coffee-producing world, prices paid for green specialty coffees often do not cover the full cost of production, let alone support thriving livelihoods for producers and their families.
Unless price discovery for green coffees moves beyond a reliance on commodity price references, producers cannot expect these prices to evolve in ways that excite them about investing in their coffee farms. Nor will these prices inspire the next generation to take up the mantle of differentiated coffee production.
This makes specialty coffee buyers increasingly concerned about future supplies of the differentiated coffees that they need to push this growing segment of the industry forward.
The current Transaction Guide is based on data describing thousands of contracts from the last three harvest seasons.
The full guide is available for download at this link.
