When the coffee beans arrive in England

The coffee produced by CECOVASA arrives at the port of Felixstowe on the east coast of England about six weeks after it leaves the Peruvian port of Callao. Felixstowe is very different from Callao; it is a large, modern port, full of the most up-to-date equipment for lifting and moving the containers. Each container is recorded on a computer.

Gregorio looks around at row after row of identical red containers:

"Coffee comes here from all over Latin America, and you can't see a single bean," he comments.

CONTAINERS: extremely large "boxes" in which goods are transported on container ships

When the coffee has been unloaded, it goes to the warehouse of a coffee roasting company. In fact, the company which bought CECOVASA's beans did not want journalists to visit; however, a smaller company let Gregorio and David visit their factory, provided they did not give the company's name.

David wondered why the coffee roasting companies want to be so secret. He thought that perhaps some of the big companies like Nestle don't want people to know that they make a lot of money for doing very little, while the coffee growers make very little money and work extremely hard.

PROVIDED THAT THEY DIDN'T: it means "if they did not" but it is stronger.

Gregorio and David watch as sacks of coffee beans are unloaded into the roasting machines. Roasting the beans takes just a few minutes. Then they are cooled, put into packages, sealed, and put into boxes ready to go to the stores. The whole process is controlled by computers, and needs only a few human workers. The computers guarantee that each pack of coffee tastes exactly the same.

Gregorio has brought a some coffee beans with him from Peru. His beans are somewhat different colours and sizes.

"How boring it would be if they were all the same," he says. "You can make them identical with chemicals, but we're organic farmers."

The factory processes a few of Gregorio's beans and makes some coffee from them. One of the company's coffee-tasters tries it. His opinion?

"Nutty" (That's good.)
"Mild Colombian" (That's good, too)
"A bit thin." (Not so good...)

IDENTICAL : exactly the same

Gregorio and David visit a superstore in a medium-sized country town, near Oxford. It's part of a big supermarket chain, though not one of the biggest. They walk passed shelf upon shelf of coffee. As this store is in England, most of the coffee is 'instant' coffee, which is sold in jars. (For some reason, people in Britain buy far more instant coffee than ground coffee or coffee beans.)

Gregorio is not particularly impressed by the store itself:
"It's certainly got a lot of things in it... but there are stores like this in Lima."
But he is surprised by the number of imported goods:
"In Peru, almost everything we buy is local. I mean, vegetables from Thailand? And bananas?"
And by the prices:
"That's the big difference [between shops in England and Peru]. In the prices, I mean."

SUPERSTORE: a very large supermarket

INSTANT COFFEE: coffee powder that you put into a cup of hot water and stir - you can drink it immediately.

NOT PARTICULARLY IMPRESSED: he doesn't think it's very special.

The store's public relations manager quickly tells them that the store's prices are very competitive.

"Our margins - the difference between our buying and selling price - are about 15% of the retail price for coffee. On other items we expect to make about 25%."

He admits that coffee prices have increased recently, but says that it doesn't really affect how much coffee people buy. When prices go up, people sometimes buy cheaper coffee for a while, but they soon go back to the brand they drank before.

COMPETITIVE: (adj) as cheap as the prices in other stores

BRAND: make or label

David thinks:

"When the price of coffee beans increases, the price of coffee in the shops increases. So, when the price of coffee beans goes down, why doesn't the price in the shops come down?"

David and Gregorio also visit a specialty coffee seller in the city of Oxford and take some of CECOVASA's beans. The shop sells a little Peruvian coffee, but John Durkin, the manager, says it isn't very popular. Nevertheless, he's very happy to have the chance to talk to a coffee farmer, and he likes the look of the beans that Gregorio shows him. Durkin says he will send the beans to be tested and consider the possibility of buying beans from CECOVASA. It would take work, they would have to develop a market for the beans, but...

One thing that Gregorio and Durkin agree on: if they can work out a deal for Durkin to buy CECOVASA's coffee beans, Durkin will tell CECOVASA the price he thinks he can sell it for, and then Durkin and CECOVASA can negotiate the price that he will pay them for the coffee beans.

DEVELOP A MARKET: persuade people to start buying it

DEAL: (v) business agreement

NEGOTIATE: (v) both sides make offers until they come to a suitable agreement.

Fairly traded coffee

The chance for coffee sellers to work out a fair deal with the people who sell their coffee is an important step towards improving living conditions for the coffee farmers and their families.

Fair trade is a small part of the coffee market in the rich countries of the North - but it is growing.

To find out more, read:
Fair Trade in Coffee
Fair Trade: a Coffee Farmer's Opinion

How can I buy fairly traded coffee?
Fair Trade Organizations