Apologies for the delay, these are difficult times as we all struggle to adapt to a new reality!

There are now several cases of Covid 19 in Ethiopia and it seems that we are in a Déjà vu once again, as everywhere else, we expect the situation to worsen.

As far as the Ethiopia Coffee Supply Chain is concerned, so far the only consequence of the worldwide pandemic seems to be a shortage of containers in Addis which is delaying loading.

Minimum Registration Price restrictions are really starting to bite and shippers are having to come up with creative ways to continue to ship; last week some shippers manage to convince NBE officials that they had differential contracts that needed registering at below current Minimum levels, others are being creative with contract grades. Meanwhile export sales are down just as the traditionally busy season begins.

We are increasingly hearing of pricing issues in Vertical Integration supply chains, as washing station owners are requesting for much higher than market prices, leading to shipment delays and shippers having to purchase coffee at ECX which in turn is putting pressure on ECX prices. 

Natural Coffee registrations are also very much reduced although with the terminal market under pressure differentially current prices could become attractive.

Birr 32.56 to the USD.

Our Lisbon office is closed and the team is working from home; our quality lab in Lisbon is therefore not working and this function is currently being solely carried out by our Addis office. This will have some implications for the way that we control quality and get samples to our customers, please bear with us as we try to overcome the current movement restrictions that we all have.

by Charles Seara Cardoso

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