Plunging coffee bean prices could drive grower cutbacks in 2019

It’s been a big year for the companies that sell coffee, but not so much for the growers that supply them. That could start to change in 2019.

Historically low prices for coffee beans in 2018 will likely reduce the incentive for farmers to expand supplies, said Rodrigo Costa, the US-based coffee director for Brazilian trading company Comexim. That could mean a price spurt ahead, analysts say, as major moves within the industry promise to boost consumption worldwide. Coca-Cola, for instance, spent $5 billion in 2018 to get into the java space.

Meanwhile, Nestle made its third-largest deal in 152 years when agreeing to pay $7.15 billion for the right to market products from Starbucks, which is now expanding in China at a rate of a new store every 15 hours as demand in the world’s second largest economy booms.


“You can’t have everybody in the chain winning at the same time,” said Lucio Dias, commercial director at Cooxupe, the world’s largest coffee-growers cooperative. “Now, it’s been the time of the industry.” Next year, he said, the growers may get a bigger piece of the action.