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Soaring coffee bean prices grind local business owners’ profits
Coffee roasteries and café owners have decided to increase prices to cope with the rising bean prices and to preserve the taste.
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Freshly picked: Coffee fruit pickers work in the Kintamani region of Bali. (Courtesy of Putu Wirasathya Darmaja)
(Courtesy of Putu Wirasathya Darmaja)
C
offee roasteries and café owners are grousing as bean prices reach record highs amid falling harvest outputs and strong demand from consumers, with some local businesses feeling the grind in their profits.
The average price for robusta beans stood at Rp 41,013 (US$2.59) per kilogram in February, rising over 34 percent compared with the same period last year, according to Agriculture Ministry data acquired by The Jakarta Post.
The average price of arabica beans surged much earlier, peaking at Rp 78,174 per kg in July last year, marking a 30 percent year-on-year (yoy) increase, before going down to Rp 71,065 per kg in February, the same data also show.
Similarly, the price of global benchmark London Robusta Coffee Futures peaked at $3,812 per tonne in early April, following a 68.97 percent increase from the same period last year, according to Investing.com data.
Muhammad Eka Pramudita, cofounder of Kemenady, a roastery in Bogor, West Java, said robusta green bean prices had been “constantly going up” in recent months, driven by failing harvests amid the El Niño weather phenomenon. Meanwhile, demand had continued to increase.
In the case of robusta beans, increased demand has also been driven by a shift in the consumption of arabica beans, which saw a significant price increase throughout last year, he told the Post on Thursday.
