A look at the year so far

As we are nearing the end of the shipping season, we’ve had some time to reflect on what 2021 has meant for Primavera and our coffee producing partners in Guatemala. We have encountered shifts and changes on all levels of our value chain. The biggest change, was the fact that we were unable to host in-person origin trips. Fortunately, we were able to create our first Virtual Origin Trip, so that we could still share updates from the farmers and our new dry mill. If you have missed it, please check it out here!

Other challenges 2021 posed were shipping related. The much discussed Ever Given blocking the stream of shipping containers in the Suez Canal was a prominent example of recent shipping slowdowns. All importers are dealing with container shortages and the extreme shipping delays from origin to warehouse. To read more about this issue, please read the Daily Coffee News article in which Nadine explains some more:

“We are seeing some disruptions in our shipping this year, with container ships being canceled or rescheduled more frequently than in the past,” Rasch said. “We still expect coffee to land in good time, but this is a logistical challenge that our small team spends a lot of time correcting. It’s just a lot harder and more time-consuming to get coffee to a port on time compared with previous years.”

Then there is of course the unavoidable topic of Covid-19. Long story short, it’s still around. Guatemala has started a vaccination program, but so far only 5% of the population of 18 million has been vaccinated and infection rates are still on the rise. Covid was responsible for an array of issues, from labor shortages at origin to trucking delays around the world, and it’s likely that these problems will persist at least in the short to medium term.

Luckily we are able to end this newsletter on a positive note, since the harvest this year was of unparalleled quality. The coffees are so great that we were able to launch our ARCOIRIS series - a selection showcasing the diverse and remarkable array of flavors in Guatemala’s coffee! Stay tuned for more updates about the impact of our launch of this series. We’re proud to work with such outstanding coffee producers, and we’re working to find new ways to support them during 2021, including with a fertilizer distribution effort this spring as farm maintenance is in full swing.