19 November 2020 | 32 mins

Episode 5: The business of green coffee

Jeffrey Young is joined by green coffee providers to better understand the business of green coffee. We'll explore how a coffee bean gets from a farm into our daily cup, why Brazil is able to produce coffee at a profit while other countries struggle, and how we're going to maintain customer choice given that farming isn't sustainable for many.

Stephen Hurst, founder of Mercanta discusses the impact of Covid and the challenges of scaling specialty coffee to bring benefit to more farmers.

Pablo Garcia, Chief Operations Officer for Neumann Gruppe gives us an update on today’s green coffee market and his views on what drives coffee commodity pricing.

Ricardo Pereira, Chief Operating Officer for Ally Coffee details how Brazilian coffee producers manage to financially sustain themselves in today’s environment of low prices.

Credits music: "Great Outdoors" by Richard James for the Coffee Music Project.

Guests

Ricardo Pereira

Chief Operations Officer, Ally Coffee

Ricardo Pereira has worked in green coffee since 2008 after founding Brasc Coffee Importers – a company focused on importing specialty coffees from Mogiana, Brazil to the US. In 2013 Brasc and Ally Coffee joined forces with a focus on expanding specialty sourcing from other origins.

Stephen Hurst

Managing Director & Founder, Mercanta

Stephen Hurst has been in the coffee business for more than 35 years, spending the first 11 years as a commodity coffee trader for the J Aron Division of Goldman Sachs group. In 1996 he founded Mercanta The Coffee Hunters and migrated into the emerging specialty coffee world.

Pablo Garcia

Chief Operations Officer, Neumann Gruppe

Pablo Garcia is COO of Neumann Gruppe, a leading green coffee service group and the holding company for Neumann Kaffee Gruppe. With more than 50 companies in 26 countries, and over 2,000 staff, the company accounted for 9% of the world’s coffee consumption in 2019.