Author: jonkingsman

Hello Benjamin, could you tell me a little bit about yourself?

I’m currently Head of Risk Management and Data Science for Roquette, based in Geneva.

I have an analytical background with an engineer diploma in applied mathematics and informatics from ENSIMAG, and a master’s in quantitative finance from Grenoble IAE.

I have more than 10 years’ experience in Risk Management. I started my career with BNP Paribas, then into software with Murex, and now plant-based ingredients for Food, Nutrition & Health markets with Roquette.

I joined Roquette as front office treasurer, managing the whole FX portfolio and dealing with all OTC operations on raw materials and energy for the group. I was promoted to Head of Risk Management and asked to set up the Risk & Control Department Function in France.

When did you move to Geneva?

I moved to Roquette CH in 2015. I worked on the business plan as well as the restructuring of the Risk and the Margin Management activities. That involved setting up a new risk framework from scratch, building tailor-made Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and analysis suitable for Roquette’s ongoing business, as well as the company’s new activities implemented in Geneva.

I love new challenges.

Such as… 

I was asked a couple of years ago to create a new Data Science Department for the company; I found it fascinating. I’m also member of the advisor board of ComRisk after having been a speaker during the last 2 years.

 Could you tell us more about Roquette?

Roquette is family-owned company. We are a global leader in plant-based ingredients, plant proteins and pharmaceutical excipients. In collaboration with our customers and partners, we address current and future societal challenges by unlocking the potential of nature to offer the best ingredients for food, nutrition and health markets.

We have customers in more than 100 countries with 25 industrial sites across the world. We have more than 8,600 employees and in 2019 our turnover was around 3.7 billion euros.

 What plant-based raw materials do you buy and process?

Using plant-based raw materials such as corn, wheat, potatoes and peas, we develop specialty ingredients that respond to unique and essential needs to better feed and cure people, to enable healthier lifestyles.

What will you be talking about at ComRisk 2020?

The panel is called ‘Managing Currency Risk Efficiently’. Most presentations on FX risk management tend to concentrate on managing commercial and M&A transactions in the current market. I will take a slightly different approach and talk about the processes involved in choosing the right financing and the right functional currencies. I would like to share my experiences in dealing with some complicated cases, such as when local, group and main business currencies are different.

This issue is important as the choices made can strongly affect the way that foreign exchange is evaluated in financial statements, and it is hard to modify without structural change. This can have a big impact on the profitability of the company.

Roquette is a global group. What are the main risks you are exposed to as a plant-based raw material consuming company, especially during this hard time of Covid 19 crisis?

The major risk for an industrial company such as ours is a business interruption due to industrial issues or raw materials shortage. It is one of the most critical matters. In addition to the direct financial loss, a delay or a cancellation in deliveries could have an important impact on customer’s satisfaction – our top priority. This has been the case more than ever during the Covid crisis as we serve both the food and the pharma markets, which are both considered as priorities. We are really committed to deliver our customers in this difficult time, and thanks to the efforts of all Roquette employees and partners such as suppliers, we succeeded.

As a key actor in Food, Nutrition and Health, our responsibility is to ensure the continuity of our essential activities while protecting our employees. ​

We should never forget that before managing prices, the first objective of our Purchasing Dept is to ensure that we have physical raw materials with the required quality delivered on time to our different plants. We have had to be agile to adapt across all geographies, such as renting new storage capacities.

Supply issues have been our most critical risk during the Covid period, but they are less of a concern in normal times when our priority is price risk management. A large part of our costs are variable costs: mainly raw materials and energy.

As you can imagine, price variations on our plant-based raw materials and energy inputs have a strong direct impact on the financial performance of the company. Market prices have been more volatile than usual during the Covid period; this has allowed us to test the robustness of our current risk framework and organization in terms of managing market risks.

 Thank you, Benjamin for your comments – and good luck with your presentation!

Good morning Monika, Could you please tell us about yourself and your role within Eversheds Sutherland?

I am an international trade lawyer within Eversheds Sutherland’s Competition, EU and Trade practice group.

 I handle a broad range of international trade law matters, including all aspects of EU/UK and U.S. export control and sanctions laws, WTO rules, anti-dumping, import tariffs, product classification (import and export), countervailing duty and safeguard measures, rules of origin, contractual rights and obligations, and trade-related due diligence in the context of M&A transactions.

I have significant experience in assisting clients in making voluntary disclosures in respect of trade control violations, which have resulted in no further action being taken against the respective company.

Until the end of last year, I was on secondment for 18 months to Shell Trading & Supply, where I provided day-to-day advice on a variety of trade control issues, including compliance with EU and US sanctions programmes. As of August this year, I am back on secondment with Shell, providing sanctions support to their trade compliance team.

International trade law is a fascinating area, where every day you face a new, challenging problem. Sanctions in particular is something I enjoy advising on, as they are so topical and are increasingly used by governments around the world as a foreign policy tool. I will be presenting on sanctions during the Commodity Risk Management Conference in October – I am really looking forward to the two-day online event, which is packed with incredibly interesting topics.

What about Eversheds Sutherland more broadly – is the firm active in supporting clients in the commodities sector?

Eversheds Sutherland is a leading adviser to commodity trading firms, commodity merchants, financial entities and commercial end-users that engage in physical and derivatives trading for hedging, financing and speculative purposes. Our clients trade energy products, agricultural and soft commodities, as well as both base and precious metals.

Our Commodities Practice Group is an interdisciplinary group specialising in all legal aspects of the commodities sector from the trading, movement and financing of commodities (including associated financial hedging and derivatives transactions) to investments in, and divestments of, shares and assets across the sector. Our team comprises more than 50 lawyers around the globe, including the key commodity hubs of South Africa, New York, Houston, London, Geneva and Singapore. Along with regulatory matters, we offer a full range of services to help clients successfully manage commodities derivatives activities, including negotiating derivatives documentation, advising on tax and disclosure implications, analysing and applying valuation methodologies for terminated derivatives transactions. Our team provides advice from the board room to the back office, all with seamless understanding of how critical the use of derivatives can be to commercial businesses.

In terms of our sanctions practice which is part of the Competition, EU and Trade group, we have significant experience in dealing with every type of export control and sanctions law as well as other regulations which have an impact on export trade activities. We regularly advise on export and sanctions regulatory issues, such as applications for licences and other authorisations, product classification, as well as government investigations and audits, internal compliance reviews, and enforcement. Our clients include multinational and regional businesses, governments, non-governmental organisations and trade associations. With international trade law specialists throughout the UK, Europe, US, Middle East, Africa and Asia, our lawyers understand the local laws, the enforcement landscape and how rules differ from one jurisdiction to the next.

Why have sanctions been so topical recently?

Sanctions are restrictive measures against territories, individuals, or entities which governments around the world use as a way to change the behaviour of other persons or countries, or to take a stance against certain reprehensible activities (such as human rights violations or terrorism). In the past, they were used less frequently and usually after reaching an agreement with allies: most countries would simply implement the sanctions which were imposed by the UN Security Council. Nowadays, governments are more readily adopting unilateral measures and using sanctions as a foreign policy tool. Sanctions is certainly something that businesses need to pay closer attention to, especially since some of the measures have an extraterritorial reach. The costs of non-compliance can be extremely high, and it is crucial to ensure that businesses are equipped with efficient policies and procedures to prevent violations.

Thank you Monika, and good luck with the conference.

Franco Costantini is Managing Director at Control Union (UK). I asked him to tell me a little about his new initiative: regenagri.

Our objective is to help the world’s farmers – and the food industry in general – to reduce soil degradation and GHG as well as to increase the value of land and its products. We are building on the work that Control Union has been doing for many years in sustainable farming, supporting agribusinesses and farms to transition to more regenerative practices. By that, I mean promoting farming techniques that increase soil health, encourage biodiversity, sequester CO2 and improve water management.

The regenagri assessment is based on about 25 items covering a range of criteria from soil parameters, biodiversity to agroforestry.

Members of regenagri have access to the regenagri platform, advisory and certifications. The platform provides farms and organisations with assessment tools and data analytics solutions.

One group of farmers working in one area may deal with issues completely different from farmers in another region. The regenagri assessments identifies the practices to improve and provide members with insight on the progress over time.

It sounds as if you are concentrating on the health of the soil…

Soil health is indeed key, but all aspects will be addressed, and everything is linked.

The world grows 95 percent of its food in topsoil. The UN FAO has warned that if we continue to degrade soil at the rate we are now, the world could run out of topsoil in around 60 years. If we carry on at this rate the world has only 60 harvests left.

The matter is urgent as improving soil health is a long-term process. Improvement of soil parameters is often not seen before 3-4 years.

How is the regenagri designed?

The program has two blocks. The first is the digital hub, where members can track their regenerative performance and measure the impacts of their agricultural practices. Members can compare progress between different farms and overtime.

The other block is continuous improvement. Members can access advisory and regenagri certification from ourselves or other approved organisations. Only members can also become certified.

Who are you aiming for as members?

At this stage, we are focusing on agribusinesses and medium to large farms or cooperatives.

We are also looking to partner with organisations who can help support and develop the programme.

What is in it for the farmer?

Our intention is to create a balance between the economic costs of implementing this programme with the environmental benefits. Ultimately, we are looking at our system to lead to higher value products and reduced production costs.

Not only does improved soil health improve yields but it also increases, or at least maintains, the value of the land. The value of land tends to increase when it is carbon positive.

Subsidies are increasingly being linked to regenerative agriculture. To access subsidies in the future farmers will need not just to implement these processes, but also to monitor them.

How does the regenagri certification work?

Given the complexity and the variety of the aspects within the regenerative agriculture concept, the regenagri certification will be applied to selected types of farms or commodities. As the program develops, we will be extending the certification to additional areas.

The regenagri certification is based on a third-party assessment based on the regenagri criteria. Farms fulfilling the minimum criteria are awarded the certification. Certified organisations can claim the regenagri certification on products or for marketing.

The regenagri logo means that the farm applies regenerative practices and is in a continuous improvement journey.

What is the next stage?

We presented the initiative on the climate change panel at the International Grain Conference in June 2020. We are now approaching organisations interested or engaged

in regenerative agriculture to become founding members, as well as opening pilots.

Regenagri is a regenerative agriculture initiative aimed at securing the health of the land and the wealth of those who live on it.

To find out more, please visit our website on www.regenagri.org

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

Good morning Ben and thank you for taking the time to chat. Could you tell me a little about LDC and coffee?

LDC first went into the coffee business a little over 30 years ago. We started in Brazil in 1989 with a single origin. We now have 19 processing, storage and logistic facilities, and coffee origination offices across 10 countries. We’re one of the world’s top green coffee merchants.

Vietnam is the largest producer of Robusta coffee and is a very important part of our business at LDC. We have a large operation there and we are one of the leading exporters of Vietnamese coffee. We are also very active in Brazil. We have a large asset network in both Brazil and Vietnam, but we also have offices and large businesses in all the major producing countries, including Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Uganda, India and Indonesia.

All our origin offices are staffed with agronomists, research analysts, traders, asset managers, quality, sustainability teams and logistics managers. We have factories, warehouses and origination teams, sourcing coffee from farmers on behalf of our customers. Most of our coffee platform employees are based in producing countries.

LDC has often been viewed as the most trader of the coffee merchants. Do you consider yourself and your company more as a trader or more as a merchant – a supply chain manager?

In the past, LDC’s coffee business might have been more of a trader than a supply chain manager, but I think this view is now out of date.

Over the last five to ten years, we’ve made large investments, and built a significant asset footprint, in all major coffee producing countries. In that sense we have become much more of a supply chain manager, offering customers reliable supply of a wide range of coffees by sourcing the right coffee from the right place, at the right time.

We still spend a lot of our time discussing price and the role of price, because we believe it plays an important part in encouraging the movement of commodities between surplus and deficit regions. In that sense, it is still essential that the market prices coffee correctly, and that the correct price signals are transmitted all along the supply chain.

So, we still believe that trading has a role to play, but the scale and the size of our supply chain, and the diversified portfolio we offer our customers means that we are now much more than traders.

What is LDC’s USP – Unique Selling Point – in coffee?

We spend a lot of time and resources to understand the flows of green coffee, and where the imbalances are, with a particular focus on research and agronomy, analysing the price drivers.

And as I mentioned earlier, we have scale in, and a deep understanding of, all the major origins, with access to 35,000 farmers through our sustainability networks, and can source the right coffee for our customers in a very transparent way.

We believe our customers see the value in the investments we make – both in analysis and agronomy, and in the origins and our supply chain. Together, these mean we can provide a service that is a bit different to everybody else.

Where are you looking to add further value in the supply chain?

LDC started out in coffee as a trader/originator. We think there is still scope for us to further develop our origin presence in certain places, and to continue our work with producers to secure coffee supply chain resilience for the future. We see origination as very important. So that’s one end of the supply chain.

At the other end of the supply chain, we work closely with our customers to understand what they need, and what their customers need, and are looking to expand these flows.

We’re looking to extend our involvement in the supply chain, so that we are as close to the farmer as possible, and as close to the consumer as our customers would like.

What can be done to improve farmers’ incomes in producing countries?

For LDC, collaborative initiatives and responsible sourcing efforts are key.

Our scale and presence at origin means that, together with our customers, we can really make a difference in farmer communities, improving their livelihoods and the long-term sustainability of their businesses. This is especially important in the more vulnerable communities globally, who are at risk of exclusion due to a lack of resources and knowledge of good agricultural practices.

The physical differentials seem to be as volatile as the flat price; how do you hedge your basis risk?

We are not trying to hedge our basis risk, but instead we hedge the flat price risk in our physical transactions. Generally, we are very comfortable with basis risk, and this is the foundation of our trading books – in other words the relationship between the physical coffee and the futures contracts. For example, we’re looking to understand the relationship between Brazilian Arabica and the New York Arabica futures contract. That is our core business as traders.

As coffee merchants, we need transparent rules and liquidity in the futures contracts into which we hedge our physical transactions. These futures contracts need to look like the coffee that we’re transacting, thereby creating a genuine relationship between the two.

As a coffee trader do you regularly cup coffee for quality?

Yes, every team and department globally regularly cups coffee. Understanding the qualities, and delivering the correct qualities to our customers, are absolutely core skills in our business.

Does coffee keep you awake at night?

I have two children and a dog – they cause me more sleepless nights!

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

This is a brief extract of an interview that will be included in my upcoming book Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee

Finca La Perla, an isolated farm located in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, was founded in 1895 by the Arenas family.

Ricardo Arenas now runs the business with his nephew; he divides his time between La Perla and Guatemala City where he was until recently President of Anacafé, the Guatemalan Coffee Association, as well as President of the Rural Coffee Foundation. In 2020 the President of Guatemala appointed Ricardo as ambassador of Guatemala for all issues related to coffee and asked him to be the Presidential Commissioner for the prevention and eradication of the child labour in the country’s coffee sector.

How important is coffee for Guatemala?

It is very important.  Coffee is the only agricultural activity that is in all 22 states – departments – in Guatemala. It is the biggest employer in Guatemala.

There are about 125,000 coffee producing families in Guatemala, all living in rural areas. With between five to nine people in each family, this adds up to about one million people who depend directly on coffee. Of those 125,000 families, 121,000 are small producers.

Coffee used to be our country’s number one export in terms of dollar revenues, but sugar has recently taken that number one slot. And now, I have to say, the main source of dollars for the country is remittances from our more than 2 million emigrants, working mainly – and legally – in the US.

Coffee is obviously important in many producing countries in Latin America and Africa, but for Guatemala it is essential. I would go as far as to say that the country’s social and political stability depends on coffee.

Are the 125,000 coffee-growing families able to live with these low coffee prices, or are they suffering?

They are suffering.

We have had a perfect storm these last 10 years. We won a battle against coffee rust disease in Guatemala in the 1980s, but new varieties of rust have been appearing in the past ten years. This is a challenge.

The currencies of both Brazil and Colombia are very weak; this is helping their agricultural exports and means that even with the world price so low producers there are covering their costs. They are happy with world prices at these levels. Guatemala has a very strong currency. This is a big problem for us.

Another problem is that with the exception of Costa Rica and Panama, we have the highest minimum wage of all the countries of Latin America. Even so, we have difficulty in getting labour. Coffee is a labour-intensive crop, but Guatemala has lost a lot of labour through emigration to the US, and also because of the labour demand of Honduras to pick their coffee crop.

The low international price is obviously the main problem. Many of our coffees are speciality coffees that trade at a premium to the world price, but I would say that 95 percent of our growers are suffering. Coffee prices in dollar terms are the same today as they were in 1983, but a dollar then is worth only 63 cents today.

Our production costs are higher than the current world coffee price and higher than other coffee producing countries around the world. Our costs are between $ 2.00 and $ 2.50 because of our minimum wage, strong currency, financial costs and higher taxes. The cost for Central America producers is between 1.75 and $ 2.00 per pound.

Coffee production in Guatemala is not economically sustainable. This is for sure. If the international market — buyers, roasters — want our farmers to keep producing coffee, then they will have to pay us a price that makes it economically sustainable.

Is child labour a problem in Guatemala?

Earlier this year, the UK’s Channel 4 Dispatches programme found children as young as 11 or 12 working long hours in a couple of Guatemala’s coffee farms. As a result of that programme our President has set up a commission to look at this issue; he has asked me to head it. We will be reporting back to the President soon. We still have child labour, and we have to be honest and recognize it, but it’s caused by poverty.

We have poverty in the rural areas of Guatemala. Many farmers can’t afford to pay outside workers to pick their coffee, so their children do it instead. Child labour is linked to poverty, and that goes back to the price that buyers are willing to pay for their coffee. If coffee prices were higher, we would have less rural poverty.

Child labour is an economic issue as much as a social issue. I am not against the roasters and the coffee shops from making money, but they must allow producers to make enough money to support their families without their children having to work on their farms.

Thank you, Ricardo for your time and comments!

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

This is a brief extract of an interview that will be published in full in my upcoming book Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee

Bridget Carrington started her career in coffee in 1983 working for ED&F Man, and after 9 years in London, moved to Kenya where she spent 27 years with C Dorman Ltd, a major exporter and roaster in East Africa, finishing as the Managing Director.

Coffee is Kenya’s 3^rd largest export in terms of revenue, but acreage has fallen by 35 percent in the past 30 years. Why?

Some of that loss of acreage is a result of urbanization, but area has also been lost to other crops. There has also been some fragmentation of land holdings as land was passed down through the generations and divided between the children in the family.

Some of that shift to other crops was due to the corruption and mismanagement under a previous regime: farmers weren’t being paid for their coffee, and the money was disappearing.  At one point, Kenya had a fantastic coffee research facility that provided extension services to farmers, but the funding dried up and the facility all but disappeared. Mismanagement and corruption led to a disillusionment among farmers and they went into other crops.

However, the main reason for diversification has been poor prices. Some of the big estates have uprooted all their coffee trees and planted pineapples, for example.

There are certain outlying areas where new acreage could be brought under coffee but increasing production in Kenya is pretty much totally reliant on increasing yields – introducing new higher yielding varieties. This is currently happening. There is also a lot of work being done to improve yields through better agricultural practices.

Tanzania is different. The country is huge and new planting is happening, bringing more land under coffee. The same in Rwanda; the planted area is increasing.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that the coffee sector in East Africa is in decline, but apart from Ethiopia and Uganda it’s pretty much stagnant. That is despite a lot of investment and a lot of initiatives to try and boost production.

What are the solutions?

Of the $3 that you might spend on a cup of coffee in a coffee shop maybe one percent goes to the men and women who cultivated the crop. Almost all the value is created after the farm gate. We have to find a way to allow farmers a greater share of the global earnings.

One way might be through the development of local demand. Kenya needs to grow its domestic market, which is very small at the moment. Only Ethiopia and Uganda have a strong domestic market for coffee. Kenya is really a tea drinking area because of its British colonial history, while Ethiopia has more of an Italian influence.

For the coffee farmer, the biggest benefit of stable domestic consumption is the guarantee of an outlet and reduced exposure to global price volatility.

What are the greatest challenges that East Africa faces in terms of coffee?

I would put climate change at the top of the list, particularly if it hampers the ability to improve yields.

Coffee farmers are getting older and this is also a challenge. Young people do not want to be coffee farmers; they prefer to move to the cities.

Meanwhile, urbanisation is also leading to the fall in acreage that we mentioned earlier. There is also the problem of access to finance.  Lack of value addition retention is a problem. Farmers are often price takers, unable to dictate when and at what price they sell their coffee. Very little coffee is sold as roasted coffee – less than 0.5% is exported as a finished roasted and ground product.

But all of these problems are not unique to East Africa. They are global problems.

Government interference is a problem in East Africa. Even now, the Kenyan government is trying to change the rules again. They want to resurrect a central depository payment system. If they do, it will mean that all the money will pass through a central system before being distributed to farmers, whereas under liberalization the farmers have been paid by their marketing agents within two or three weeks.

Compared to most other locally produced crops, coffee production in East Africa is heavily regulated by government. Governments don’t seem to be making any moves to deregulate; on the contrary. Coffee is political in East Africa.

You’ve now retired from Dorman’s; what does the future hold for you now?

I’ve been in the industry for 36 years and it’s been very good to me in terms of personal development, career, remuneration and everything else. I would like now to be able to give a little bit back. I would love for others to benefit from my experience in this wonderful industry, to share the passion and build the same kind of wonderful relationships and friendships.    I cannot imagine a world without some of the coffee professionals I have met along the way.  Once coffee gets into your blood, I don’t think it will ever leave.

Farmers are most in need our help today to ensure a sustainable livelihood, so that is where I would most like to focus. For the past few months I have been working with the ITC – the International Trade Centre – looking at value addition for East Africa’s smallholder coffee farmers. The paper has now been published and I am now working on a project to test some of the report’s recommendations.

For the past ten years, I have been on the board of trustees of CQI – the Coffee Quality Institute – and I am now Vice-Chairperson of it.

Thank you, Bridget for your time and comments!

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

This is a brief extract of an interview that will be published in my upcoming book Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee

Löfbergs was founded in 1906 by the brothers Anders, John and Josef Löfberg. They began roasting their own coffee in Karlstad in 1911. Today, the company is one of the Nordic region’s biggest family-owned coffee businesses, producing the equivalent of more than 10 million cups of coffee every day. Löfbergs is still fully owned by the Löfberg family, now in its third and fourth generations.

 I spoke with Martin Löfberg, one of that fourth generation and head of procurement for the company. I asked him what that role entailed.

I spend a lot of time in the coffee origin countries. Out of the twelve years I have spent with the company, I reckon I have travelled for one year of that. I have especially been focusing on the co-operative side, Fairtrade, organic and Rainforest Alliance certified cooperatives, mainly in Central and South America.

On a daily basis I do a lot of cupping: three times a day for a total of 300 cups. That’s an important part of my role. It allows me to be actively involved and not just manage the procurement process from a distance. It is important for me to be inside the flow. It allows me to keep an ear to the rail tracks, to listen to what’s going on, to understand the challenges in producing countries, and to stay on top of how our farmers and partners are doing. Although it may sound counterintuitive, being hands-on allows me to look at the business in a more strategic way.

Throughout my day, I also have to keep on top of the coffee price and follow the futures markets.

What percentage of your coffee do you buy against the futures and what percentage on a flat price?

We buy close to 99 percent of our coffee on a differential basis against the futures. We only buy our speciality coffees on a flat price.

About 15-20 percent of the coffee that we buy is Fairtrade. For a number of years now world prices have been low, and these purchases have been at the Fairtrade minimum price. These coffees are priced on a differential basis, but a minimum price applies. It is 140 cents per pound for washed arabicas, with a 30-cent premium for organic, plus a 20-cent social premium. That gives a minimum price of 190 cents, to which you may have to add a quality premium.

In the past three years the world price has been higher than that for only one day – in December 2019! Apart from that one day, the Fairtrade minimum price has applied.

When you buy coffee, do you buy with a particular blend in mind, or do you sometimes buy a coffee and work out where to put it later?

Some consumers like a consistent taste profile over the seasons and over the years. If a new-found coffee fits into our blends, we are happy to introduce it. However, we operate on a more strategic basis for the blends. The blend drives the coffee.

This is not as easy as it sounds; every new crop is a new page in a book. It’s never the same as the previous crop, and it takes a long time to get an understanding of that. It takes at least five years to become a rookie in this business. It’s always changing. So, for the blends we continually try to be proactive and to see how the crops are coming out, and what qualities are being produced. We have a very narrow tolerance in our blends.

Some consumers like to buy specific origins or regions, or single estates or even single lots, part of an estate. Sometimes, we come across something that is really unique. When we do, we buy it and then test it through our two coffee shops, which are a little bit our centres for innovation, to see if the consumers like it.

There’s a treasure chest of findings throughout my travels that I have been able to introduce.  We are able to use our big flows of coffees to put a few bags inside a container to make it easier for us to import.

Some people have complained that there’s too many certification agencies. Have you found this?

We don’t really see this as a problem, particularly with the merger that is now under way between UTZ and Rainforest Alliance. The merger should be completed by 2022, but from 1^st July 2020 you can cross-use coffees from farms and estates under both.

We are in favour of the merger as it can be a challenge for farmers to handle too many standards. It’s costly for them to be part of a certification scheme, not just in money but also in time. It is also confusing from the consumer side. Having too many certification standards dilutes the picture.

However, having more than one certifying agency means having access to a wider market. UTZ and Rainforest Alliance were quite similar in their standards.

Fairtrade is different because of their focus on the premium and the minimum price. They are strong from a social perspective. Then you have the organic coffees which are very strong from an environmental perspective.

Rainforest Alliance and UTZ operate on the bigger farms where Fairtrade doesn’t operate. So, Fairtrade is small scale, while Rainforest Alliance / UTZ can be applied on a bigger scale.

We see certification as important, and one of many tools, but for us the Löfbergs brand is more important. Our brand is the guarantee and the trust from consumers and partners that we build into it. Certification symbols and so forth are sometimes important for consumers, but Löfbergs is the true seal.

What’s your favourite type of coffee? And how do you prepare it?

It depends on the day and the time of day! My most common technique is to self-grind and then use a filter. But I also use a French press and an Aeropress.

As for which coffee I prefer, it’s like choosing between your kids. It’s impossible! I do have my favourite espresso though. It’s a natural Brazilian one. If I don’t get it at least once a week I would die!

Many thanks Martin for your time and input!

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

This is an extract of an interview that will be published later this year in my new book Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee

Andrea Illy is Chairman of illycaffè S.p.A., a family-owned coffee business founded in Trieste in 1933. I spoke to him by telephone from Trieste and asked him about his family heritage.

My grandfather was Hungarian, but at the time of Austro-Hungarian empire. He lived most of his youth in Vienna; this is where he fell in love with coffee and where he decided that coffee was what he wanted to do in his life. When he came to Trieste, the city was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He started his coffee business with a Viennese heritage.

Trieste and my family share the same heritage: both started as Austro-Hungarian, but both became over the decades very much Italian. We nurture both. Our Italian heritage is about coffee and particularly expresso coffee. Our Austrian heritage is more about coffee as a hot drink: filter or café latté. We respect them both!

Why does illycaffè produce blended rather than single-origin coffee?

For three reasons:

Blending gives you the richness and the complexity of the aroma spectrum. If you listen to a single violinist, you can discern specific notes. However, if you listen to a symphony orchestra you get the richness and the complexity of the composition – the full spectrum of sounds. Blending is to coffee what a symphony orchestra is to music.

Blending gives you balance in the coffee. It enables you to compensate the disparities of the different origins. For example, Brazil is famous for its chocolatey aroma whereas Central America is famous for its flowery or fruity aroma. You can also compensate acidity with the bitterness, say, of a sun-dried coffee.

Blending gives you consistency. We want a product which is always of exactly the same quality.

You can only obtain these three fundamental attributes by blending. I don’t believe in pure origin. Pure origins are good as a kind of a tasting at a coffee experience, but if you are really seeking the best possible quality then it has to be a blend. Our blend is made of nine origins. Of course, the better the quality at origin the better the blend.

Could you tell me about your University of Coffee?

The University of Coffee is organized into three different departments: one for the growers;

one for the hospitality professionals; and one for coffee connoisseurs. For the last ten years we have run a master’s degree in coffee. We take twenty students from all over the world; they stay with us for six months.

We serve nearly 9 million cups of coffee per day. To make sure that each cup is as good as the last, we have to educate our farmers and we have to educate our baristas. But we also want to educate our consumers to appreciate coffee.

Coffee still has a long way to go to reach the same level of sophistication as exists in the wine industry. By that I mean sophistication in terms of product expertise: how you produce your wine and how you drink it.

I also mean sophistication in terms of narrative. A glass of wine in a restaurant will cost you a minimum of 6-8 euros, while a cup of coffee will cost you 2-3 euros. Coffee is as good as wine, and it should be as expensive as wine.

It is not good for your health to drink too much wine. But coffee makes you live better and longer. Coffee is a beverage of success: socially and professionally, and for your health.

My dream is to bring coffee culture to the same level of nobleness as premium wines. This means approaching coffee in a sophisticated way, and this is what we teach our students.

Is it your quality that enabled you to build the brand?

Yes, in order to build a successful brand, you need to have a narrative, an image, and a product. The question is, which comes first? Do you start with an incredible product that you narrate to the consumer, or do you start with a wonderful narrative that you then build the product around?  We were in the first case: we had this unique product; we started narrating the coffee culture, and we built our image, our point of difference and our credo around it.

illycaffè has been called the Armani of coffee. Is illycaffè a luxury brand?

It’s not a luxury brand. It is a high-end brand, what we call ‘altagamma’. ‘Luxury’ is more inaccessible and exclusive. Coffee is by its very nature inclusive. I’m proud to say that unwealthy people with a good palate can enjoy our coffee even though they pay a premium price for it.

Our coffee has all the paradigms of luxury – the superior quality and the savoir faire in both production and consumption. It has a wonderful image. It has everything that a luxury brand has except the exclusiveness. It is an inclusive product.

Your company motto is ‘Live Happily’. Could you please tell me a little about that?

Happiness has two philosophical definitions: one from Aristotle and one by Epicure. For Aristotle, happiness is living in a world of virtue, combining altruism, knowledge and wisdom – living for the greater good.

The Epicurean definition is about hedonism.  It is about the three pleasures in life: the natural necessary; the natural unnecessary; and the unnatural unnecessary. Epicure says that you should forget about the ‘unnatural unnecessary’; it will destroy you. You should be moderate with the ‘natural unnecessary’, but you should take full advantage of the natural necessary pleasure.

I consider coffee as a ‘natural unnecessary’ pleasure for the at least 1.5 billion coffee drinkers around the world – in terms of joy, in terms of energy, in terms of health, in terms of social life, in terms of mood.

And each cup that you drink helps the at least 25 million people in the coffee supply chains – people who depend on coffee for their human development and their quality of life. Most of these people live in poor countries and they have no alternative to coffee.  By taking your little treasure every day, several times a day, each time you know that you are helping a family in Ethiopia, or in Guatemala or wherever.

This is the dream of coffee.

Thank you, Andrea for your time and input!

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

This is an extract of an interview that will be published in my upcoming book Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee

Jan Lühmann was until the end of May 2020 Global Head of Procurement for Jacobs Douwe Egberts. I spoke with him while he was on ‘gardening leave’ before becoming Co-CEO of Bernhard Rothfos, the Hamburg based mainstream trading arm of Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, in September 2020.

You’re one of the few people I’ve met who has moved from a merchandising role to a buying role, and then back to a merchandising role. What’s the main difference between merchants and roasters?

Technology, brand building and process are more important for a roaster than for a trader or merchant. Roasters focus a lot on technology, be it single serve, instant coffee or other proprietary USP’s. The roasting industry also has a strong emphasis on process, while the trading mindset is nimbler and more reactive as it needs to quickly adapt to market situations and shifting client needs.

In the past, I understand that some roasters set up trading departments but have since closed them. Is that correct?

There have been waves of this.  Both roasters and farmers are easily attracted to the idea of going direct, to cut out the middleman – the evil trader. And on the surface, many will agree that this makes sense. However, they quickly find out that the evil trader has many real and vital service functions. Roasters also found that trading is counter to their industrial DNA.

I don’t think it is possible to run a true trading functionality within an industrial company.

You are now moving to Neumann….

After 35 years in the coffee business, origin and trading, I spent the last 7 years with Jacobs Douwe Egberts. Two years ago, they promoted me to Global Head of Procurement, still in charge of the coffee and tea buying, but as well everything else such as packaging, machinery and even digital media. I found that I didn’t enjoy that. I really wanted to go back to what I love, which is coffee. I’m a coffee guy.

Neumann Kaffee Gruppe is the world’s largest green coffee house. They are a traditional and yet modern coffee firm with a focus on the product, on customers, the entire supply chain.  They value relationships and have a long-term commitment to coffee, and only to coffee.  So, when the opportunity came to become Co-CEO of Bernhard Rothfos, I jumped at it.

Is there a dichotomy, a divergence, between a roaster’s commercial department and its sustainability department? The sustainability people want to make sure that farmers stay in business, but the commercial people just want lowest price possible.

The people in both the sustainability and commercial departments of roasters have specific targets to achieve. Yes, there is the commercial drive to buy cheap, but it’s for management to pull those contradictions together and align them into a coherent brand strategy

Many roasters struggle with this, but that is what is so interesting about the coffee business in general. It is complex. It is changing. It has tensions. And those tensions will be resolved, sometimes with more of an emphasis on the commercial aspect, and sometimes with more of an emphasis on the sustainability aspect.

In the long run the consumer is the ultimate arbiter on those choices.

Many roasters only buy certified coffee. There seems to be a lot of certification systems: are there too many; and are they effective?

It’s very easy to be critical of certification.

My view is not that there are too many certifiers, or that they do a bad job. I strongly believe that the people in the certification business are good people who mean well and who do make a positive difference.

However, it is imperfect. And whatever positive impact one has in coffee producing countries the situation will remain imperfect. We are thus certifying imperfection.

There is a risk that you’re over promising. Even though the legal wording in the documents is smart enough so that the occasional unacceptable incident will not compromise a roaster’s legal position, consumers will nevertheless expect perfection.

Also, the desire by roasters to portray perfection can lead to a misallocation of resources. How much of the global sustainability spend reaches farmers and makes a real difference, and how much serves to “prove” perfection in a roaster’s supply chain? As a coffee industry, I believe we should be moving towards a mindset of transparency. Acknowledge the imperfections and then focus on mitigation and continuous improvement.

One of the things I’m most proud of at JDE was to be part of the effort to start a different thinking – to move from a mindset focused on certification to one where you acknowledge the imperfections in the supply chains, and then be a part of remedying them, ideally in a pre-competitive way.

So, you are saying that certification is part of the solution, but it’s not sufficient?

Yes. Also, let’s not forget that the traders are doing what the roasters are asking of them. The trade is a service provider to the industry. The buck stops with the roaster.

So, what is the solution?

People are very fast with quick answers, quick conclusions and one-liners, but coffee is complex.  There are a lot of tensions around development and sustainability, but you can’t limit the discussion to agriculture when many of the challenges are social.

The economic challenges in coffee producing countries aren’t always rooted in the price and productivity of coffee alone; they are often driven by societal issues. Many of the good NGOs are working on that.

The realities of coffee are just as varied and diverse as the different tastes of coffee: complex, contradictory, fascinating and not easy to resolve. But many very positive and engaging discussions are on-going.

Are you a coffee addict?

Yes, I love this business. You can touch it, feel it, smell it. It’s tangible.  I like the physicality of coffee: the beans and the beverage. I like the social aspect of coffee: it’s a people’s business.

Thank you, Jan for your time and input.

This is a short extract of an interview that will appear in my forthcoming book Merchants & Roasters – Conversations over Coffee.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020

Jim Sutter (pictured bottom right) is CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council

Good morning, Jim. Could you please tell me about the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) and what it does?

We differentiate and build a preference for U.S. soy, and we ensure market access for U.S. soy in markets all around the world. We have a global network of about 140 people that work for our organization, most of them are outside the U.S.

How do you differentiate U.S. soy?

We demonstrate to our customers the U.S. Soy Advantage. It is anchored by four key elements. The first is its exceptional composition and intrinsic quality such as its amino acid profile and energy level. The second is consistent supply and reliability of our farmers and the whole export supply chain. The third is sustainability and our farmers commitment to protect the environment and conserve our natural resources. The final element is innovation beyond the bushel and the U.S. soy industry’s promise to continually adapt, evolve and improve.

How environmentally sustainable is U.S. soy?

Sustainability is in the DNA of our farmers; 97 percent of our farms are family-owned and nearly all are multi-generational. The farmers I talk with are always proud to tell me that they are 4^th, 5^th or 6^th generation.

For me, one of the ultimate measures of sustainability is if farmers are passing on their farms to the next generation. Not only that, but farmers will all also tell you that they want to leave their farm – particularly the soil – in better condition than when they started.

The U.S. Soil Conservation Service was founded in 1935, now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and it has really helped educate and guide farmers on how to minimize soil erosion, as well as to limit the runoff of water and reduce the amount of energy they use.

When I think about what consumers around the world are concerned about – what they want to know when they’re asking about sustainability – is that the farmland will be there to feed their children and grandchildren. I think this multi-generational aspect is a great example of the sustainable way that we farm.

In addition, we have a program called the U.S. Soy Sustainability Assurance Protocol; it was developed by a multi-stakeholder group of global consumers, NGOs and the U.S. soybean industry as a means of verifying or showing the sustainability of our commodity. The European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation (FEFAC), which has developed soy-sourcing guidelines that allows buyers to verify the sustainability of the soy that they’re sourcing, has approved and recognised the verification.

How are the trade wars affecting you?

The U.S. soybean industry started investing in China 40 years ago. We’re very pleased with the relationship that we have built up over that time.

China is the largest import market in the world for soy. The trade war was detrimental for U.S. farmers, and we lost market share in this valuable destination for U.S. soy, but I anticipate this for only an ephemeral period. In the meantime, we shifted some exports to other regions, but you don’t want to be hindered from a market that makes up 60 percent of total world import demand.

We’re pleased that the Phase One agreement has been put in place, and we are optimistic that it will be implemented. The volume is significant as China pledged to buy $32 billion worth of U.S. agriculture products over two years. I know that there’s a lot of talking back and forth between the two countries, but I think at the end of the day China, and its many importers of U.S. Soy with whom we’ve built strong relationships, wants to see the agreement implemented as much as we do.

If you’re a sizable importer, you want multiple origins to choose from, so China has identified suppliers from both northern hemisphere origin (primarily from the United States) and southern hemisphere origin (primarily from Brazil). That’s how world trade works: importers want to have multiple origins to buy from, and exporters want to have multiple destinations to sell to.

How has African Swine Fever affected exports?

It did lower total global demand for soy, but it didn’t impact the U.S. too much. It was happening in China at a time when exports were down. We hear that the ASF situation is improving pretty rapidly there, and we’re glad to hear that.

With regard to ASF in other markets, we’re certainly concerned because it is a serious disease for the swine industries in those respective countries. So, we want to do all we can to help prevent the spread of ASF, and of course, stop it from reaching the U.S. We hope that science can help eradicate ASF, or at least keep it under control.

Are you actively trying to develop overseas markets outside of China?

As I mentioned, China is the largest import market for soy, but we do a lot of work in other markets as well. We diversify our marketing efforts, and we have stepped up our work in countries with large populations, low protein consumption and growing economies – for example Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Egypt.

We work to teach people in these countries, to bring them skills on how to better use soy to improve livestock nutrition – the kind of things we did in China years ago. We are trying to take that same educational model to other markets around the world.

Which are the top three export markets for U.S. soy?

As individual countries, China, Mexico and Egypt are our top three markets, but when you take the EU as a whole it slips in there at number two after China.

Does USSEC also work to increase domestic U.S. soy demand?

The United Soybean Board (USB) is one of our founding members; they do the domestic marketing work for soy inside the U.S.

USB manages the checkoff program. Each U.S. farmer contributes a small portion of the selling price of soybeans into the checkoff program, and that provides resources that USB invests in the domestic market; they also invest in the work that the USSEC does internationally.

U.S. soy farmers have been going through a rough time recently. What message would you like to send to them?

It’s fortunate that you are in the food production business. The products that farmers produce serve as the foundation for food, feed and fuel and are grown in a sustainable and high-quality manner that meet what the people of the world need to survive and thrive.

I tell our farmers to ‘stick with it’, and that the future looks bright. We have a growing world population out there. You’re going to be an important part of feeding those people in the future.

Thank you, Jim for your time and comments!

Jim Sutter presented at the IGC Virtual Conference in London on June 10^th. To see his and other presentations, please register here.

© Commodity Conversations ® 2020