Poor Farmer

By Neena Rai The Wall Street Journal Blog October 31, 2012 Coffee fans are tightening their purse strings and consuming the beverage at home rather than paying marked-up coffee shop prices as the economic crisis continues to bite. In response, leading international coffee roasters such as Kraft, Nestlé   and   Starbucks are setting their sights on a new model: the premium home market. Roasters are looking for new pockets of consumption and they believe they have found it in the fast-growing market for small machines that can produce a café-quality brew from single-serve pods of high-grade espresso grounds, for a fraction of the cost. The coffee pod sector is forecast to see sales grow 47% in the U.S. and 38% in Western Europe over the next four years, according to U.K. based research firm Euromonitor. David Rogers, the home sales and marketing director for Lavazza Coffee U.K. reckons that in Britain alone, the sale of coffee capsules will soar by a minim...

Yemen's best known crop is the narcotic leaf qat, but it was once coffee. A businessman seeks to revive the country's past reputation as a leading coffee producer.  By Nafeesa Sayeed The Christian Science Monitor October 27, 2012 ZAHRA, YEMEN - Yemen's best-known crop may be qat, the omnipresent narcotic leaf chewed daily by many Yemenis, but this impoverished country was once one of the world's great coffee producers. Now one enterprising businessman is seeking to reclaim that historical status. Indian businessman Shabbir Ezzi, a member of a Shiite sect with roots in Yemen, hopes to persuade farmers to give up growing qat –  "a Class-A drug," according to him – and give coffee a try instead. "The whole country is completely gripped by [this] drug habit," he says. A half-dozen years ago, Mr. Ezzi relocated to Yemen and Al-Ezzi Industries, his family company, invested $1 million in an enterprise buying coffee from producers...

By William Davison Bloomberg October 26, 2012 Ethiopian exports dropped 7 percent to $699.1 million in the first quarter as shipments of coffee and oil seeds fell, the Trade Ministry said. Foreign sales of coffee in the continent’s largest producer of the beans earned $199.3 million in the four months through Oct. 10, compared with $201.9 million in the same period a year earlier, the Addis Ababa-based ministry said in an e-mailed statement on Oct. 24. Ethiopia’s calendar has 13 months, one of which runs from Sept. 6 to Sept. 10. The second-most valuable export in the quarter was gold, which increased 2 percent to $132.7 million, the ministry said. The stimulant qhat raised $69.5 million in foreign exchange, an increase of 1 percent, it said. Ethiopia posted a trade deficit of $7.5 billion in the fiscal year ended July 7 as a result of slowing growth in exports and increased import costs, according to   Access Capital , an Addis Ababa-based research group. E...

By Candice Choi AP News via Businessweek October 25, 2012 NEW YORK (AP) — McDonald's will start selling bags of ground coffee at its restaurants in Canada next month, a move that could spread to other regions around the world if successful. The world's biggest hamburger chain says the ground coffee will be available in the majority of its 1,400 stores by Nov. 8. The packages will weigh about 340 grams (about 12 ounces) and cost about 7 Canadian dollars ($7.04). A representative at the company's headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., was not immediately available to say whether there were any plans to sell ground coffee in the U.S. But the company filed a trademark for "McCafe" ground and whole bean coffee here last month. John Betts, president of McDonald's Canada, also noted in an interview that McDonald's has a history of taking hit products from specific regions and expanding them globally. The company's McCafe specialty coffees we...

by   James Cordier & Michael Gross   of   Liberty Trading Group Inside Futures October 25, 2012 While many commodities are prone to sharp fluctuations in demand, coffee demand has consistently increased for decades.  That demand paradigm might have a steep increase in the coming years as China, India and other emerging countries are introduced to the marketing power of the West. Rising Global Demand Global demand for coffee is expected to grow by an annual rate of 2-3 percent for the next decade.  Meanwhile, coffee production has had a difficult time keeping up with demand in recent years.  The International Coffee Organization (ICO) recently announced that they will launch a marketing campaign to promote coffee in emerging countries.  This should help increase demand and lay the groundwork for acquiring new and loyal coffee drinkers into the future. Demand for coffee is fairly inelastic in the major consuming countries....

By Kirk Johnson The New York Times October 23, 2012 Starbucks, which started with this Seattle store, epitomizes the  coffee scene in a city where smaller shops are trying to compete. Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Ryan Williams via The New York Times SEATTLE — This city got caffeinated over the past couple of decades, buzzed on its rise in the pop culture as a symbol of hipster-geekster cool, but also on the real stuff: coffee. Like salt and pepper — or more aptly, cream and sugar — coffee and Seattle became an item, each word modifying and reinforcing the other, thanks mainly, of course, to  Starbucks , the coffee giant that exploded around the world from here. Starbucks exported beans and brews, wrapping it all in a cool, earth-toned vision of Pacific Northwest life that may or may not have reflected reality. But what is it like to compete head-to-head, latte for latte, against Starbucks in the throne room itself? Ask Demi Larsen. She’s a 25-year-o...

Company wins a $200,000 World Bank contract to help set up a Commodity Exchange in Tanzania By Elleni Araya Addis Fortune October 23, 2012 S talwarts Management Consultancy Services, founded by former employees of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) recently signed a 200,000 dollar World Bank contract, to conduct a feasibility study that can set up a Commodity Exchange in Tanzania. The World Bank had floated an international tender for the feasibility study and design of a Tanzanian Commodity Exchange in June 2012 of this year, under the Financial Sector Capacity Building facility for the Bank of Tanzania. The company started up by Yohannes Assefa, former Senior Legal Adviser and Chief Compliance Office at ECX, and Bharat Kulkarni, (PhD), former trading operation manager, signed the contract on October 18, 2012, after finalizing negotiations which had started in August,2012, when the company was awarded the project. Other ECX alumni have also collaborated...

By  Peter Coy Bloomberg Businessweek October 21, 2012 Yemen has some serious troubles, including hunger, water shortages, and running battles with Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are propping up the Yemeni government so its territory doesn’t become a launching pad for Al Qaeda terrorism. On Oct. 18, the State Department brought a delegation of Yemeni businesspeople to Bloomberg’s New York headquarters to discuss their desire to attract U.S. investment. What’s one thing that they said could help lift Yemen’s fortunes? Coffee. The Yemeni city of Mocha is one of the world’s oldest sources of coffee beans. The website  Specialty Coffee Advisor  has this to say: “Yemen coffees are the epitome of a ‘wild cup’ and can border on scary at times because of their deep, earthy, complex pungency with overlays of dry fruit (think raisin), cardamom, dry cinnamon, and tobacco notes.” The Yemeni government is encouraging farmers to plant co...

Doing Business in Ethiopia:  2012 Country Commercial Guide for U.S. Companies US Department of Commerce April 30, 2012 State-owned enterprises and ruling party-owned entities dominate major sectors of the economy.  There is a state monopoly or state-run dominance in sectors such as telecommunications, power, banking, insurance, air transport, shipping, and sugar.  In addition, the government controls importation of staple foods such as grains and oil.  Ruling party affiliated "endowment" companies have a strong presence in the ground transport, fertilizer, and textile sectors.  Both state-owned enterprises and "endowment" companies dominate the cement sector. State-owned enterprises have considerable advantages over private firms, particularly in the realm of Ethiopia's regulatory and bureaucratic environment, including ease of access to credit and speedier customs clearance.  Local business owners as well as foreign investors complain of ...

By Antonella Ciancio Reuters October 19, 2012 (Milan) - Italians aren't the biggest coffee drinkers in Europe - that title goes to the Finns - but their nation's link with cafe culture is etched on every menu board, giving the world the espresso, the mocha and the latte. Now that link is feeling the strain of recession. As Europe's debt crisis drags on, more and more cash-strapped Italians are giving the coffee bar a miss and taking their morning caffeine hit in the kitchen. "Italians are drinking more coffee at home than at the bar," Raffaele Brogna, the founder of consumer blog community ioleggoletichetta.it, told Reuters. The trend hasn't gone unnoticed at the Bar Principe in central Milan, and it is hitting the owner, Fausto D'Andrea, in the pocket. Though coffee prices have risen sharply - reaching a 34-year high on world coffee markets last summer - D'Andrea has had to freeze prices to keep his clientele. ...