Steps in preparing coffee exports.

• Author: Hilten, Jan van

A precondition for a successful export marketing strategy for coffee is that the physical product conform to market requirements. Only an understanding of and continuous adaptation to the foreign market can help to achieve this. This applies to all coffees, whether arabica or robusta, whether grown at high or low altitude, dry or wet processed and so on. All roasters require that coffee "quality" be reliable, stable and, as far as possible, constant.

If the quality of the coffee bean is poor or unreliable, it will usually be impossible or too costly to make it into a reasonably appealing export product. Nevertheless, even if the raw coffee is a product with good sales potential, its place in the export market will still depend on the standard or export processing and the manner in which it is presented to the buyer.

To be able to respond to foreign market requirements a coffee exporter needs to be familiar with individual consumer markets and must be able to assess their particular preferences. This cannot be done without qualified staff. In the first place this involves persons who also have knowledge of coffee liquoring. The main determinant of coffee quality is the "liquor" or taste. Coffee exporters who do not consider the liquor when defining the "quality" of their product cannot therefore ensure that shipments correspond to the requirements of individual roasters and markets. (See "Cup-tasting: Quality Control for Coffee Exports" by Max Hug, FORUM, October-December 1990, page 4.)

A coffee exporter must also have staff skilled in the export preparation of the coffee. Export presentation is a combination of "grading" and "quality." These factors vary from market to market and between individual roasters. Achieving suitable export presentation need not be difficult or expensive since the investment is mainly in expertise, methodology, and of course motivation and incentives. Coffee mills should be designed with export presentation in mind, and their hardware should conform to market requirements-not the other way around (as is unfortunately often the case, especially in large central mills that process most or sometimes all of a country's harvest).

Requirements

The requirements for export presentation relate to the size and weight or density of the coffee beans and their quality.

Size and density:

Coffee is graded by size and density to ensure that the end-product is as uniform as possible. Coffee that has not been separated by size is commonly called "ungraded" (this should not be confused with the term "undergrade," which means a substandard coffee, usually of poor and mixed appearance).

It is difficult to roast large beans along with small, light or broken beans, as the small ones tend to become overroasted. Very small bits of broken bean may even burn up altogether. An important industrial requirement is therefore that coffee be "graded" so that it can be more easily and uniformly roasted, something that likewise helps to preserve liquor quality (i.e. its taste).

Coffee is also graded because larger and more solid beans tend to have better liquor quality than small, light ones. To a certain extent therefore grading also serves to separate beans according to quality. However the market value of a solid coffee of good appearance that may have been overfermented in the washing station will easily be worth only half that of an inferior-looking lot of coffee that was, however, correctly processed.

Another reason that coffee is graded is to present an evely sized, attractive-looking product to consumers who buy whole roasted beans rather than prepacked ground coffee. During the past 20 years or so many consumers in the major markets have turned to vacuum-packed roasted and ground coffee and switched from the traditional whole beans. Today the majority of coffee is retailed as vacuum-packed "roast and ground" (R&G) or as instant or soluble. This development greatly improves the purchasing flexibility of roasters, since with R&G or solubles it is now only the liquor quality, rather than the appearance of the roasted bean, that concerns individual consumers. Despite this, the spectacular worldwide growth in the recent years in the number of small specialty shops selling freshly roasted coffee beans means that in some sections of the retail market the appearance of roasted beans is again regaining its importance.

A coffee exporter therefore needs to understand the grading preferences and requirements of the target market(s) and has to satisfy those requirements. An exporter who wishes to sell to a diversity of markets, especially those where premium prices are obtained for "quality," must be flexible and adaptable in the export grading and presentation of the product.

Quality:

The second element of export presentation is a coffee's "quality." As mentioned above, reliable and stable quality is of prime importance. In addition "quality" should fit into a roaster's blend -- consumer tastes vary from country to country, and it is useless for example to propose a coffee with top-class acidity and excellent flavour to a market that tends to roast coffee very darkly, since to a large extent dark roasts simply result in the evaporation of these liquor components. Such coffees obtain premium prices only in markets where flavour and acidity are the main selling points.

Coffee "quality" in southern Europe is, for example, very different from that in Germany, which is Europe's largest consumer of quality coffee. An exporter wishing to sell to the Scandinavian market will have to supply different "quality" than that required for the U.S. market, and so on.

In addition, in each market individual roasters have specific qualities on sale that are prepared by blending different coffees. Even if a roaster sells a single origin as "pure Colombian," for example, he may still be...