Autumn is a busy time for the green team at Monmouth as we make final preparations for coffees arriving at the end of this year and the first few months of the next.
Last month in Brazil we completed our buying from the new crop. We travel each year to Carmo Coffees in Minas Gerais where we select coffees for our counter, and the Brazil component of our Monmouth Espresso. Brazil is the largest (in size and volume) coffee producing country in the world. They typically account for around a third of the world-wide crop and news in coffee in Brazil will impact the entire industry. Post-harvest, Brazil is going through an extended dry spell which may delay flowering for next year’s crop. We are anticipating that this might mean a late crop next year but there will be a lot of weather between now and then, so this isn’t certain.
There has been a trucker’s strike in Colombia which has meant delays in shipping our final containers from the main crop in Narino, and the mitaca crop in Huila. The government announced an increase in diesel prices which prompted the trucking companies to protest. Goods, agricultural and manufactured, are mostly transported by truck in Colombia. It is a huge industry and increases in costs mean increases for everyone. The Colombian government argue that diesel has been subsidised for too long and that it is unsustainable. Removal of the subsidy is part of a wider group of economic decisions that are proving to be unpopular. The truckers are also protesting at general conditions and safety on the road.
We have selected our new crop coffees from Bolivia and Peru. Coffee in these two countries is usually harvested around a month or two later than Brazil, so are only now being hulled, rested, graded and readied for export. We are pleased with the selections we’ve made and look forward to seeing these coffees on our counter in December and January.
Over the next month or so we will finalise our shipments from South America and organise delivery into the warehouses. Our next buying will be in Huila, Colombia where the main crop will be harvested from November to January. After which we will be heading straight into the Central America harvest season which starts early in the new year. Most of the farms in Central America have finished their in-between crop tidy up and projects.
Descamex (the company which decaffeinates our decaffeinated coffee) have begun building a new plant in Brazil. This will mean that from mid to late 2025 Decaf Fazenda IP (Brazil) will be decaffeinated in Brazil rather than Mexico. Our La Bolsa Decaf (Guatemala) will continue to go to Mexico for processing. This is an exciting project for Descamex, and we look forward to visiting the new facilities when they are open.
Our Dockley shop project continues, at time of writing Tom the carpenter has been working on the oak table and a reformatted counter. We have had to adjust our plans to accommodate a new boiler for our filter coffees as the model we have been using for possibly two decades is no longer in production. The oak table is coming along nicely. It is being made from salvaged oak pews and will run to three meters long. They don’t make trees like that anymore, that’s for sure.
Monmouth x