Thursday, September 01, 2005


another update on coffee & nola

again the invaluable don schoenholt of gillies, one of the creators of the specialty coffee industry as we know it today, reports:

"I communicated throughout the day with trade friends with New Orleans contacts.

The port situation is impossible. The Green Coffee Association has cancelled its planned annual event scheduled for New Orleans next month.

CoffeeNetwork reports "Proctor and Gamble, who operate one of the largest coffee roasting facilities in New Orleans for Folgers and Millstone - as well as logistics operations, has not been able to assess the situations." For the complete coffeeNetwork report see www.coffeenetwork.com.

After talking to several greenies, I would now estimate that there was in New Orleans approximately 2-million bags of green coffee in the city's 14 coffee warehouses last week. This is about one-third of the nations total green coffee stocks of an estimated 6-million bags. 734-Thousand bags are "Certified" stock acceptable for proffering against NYBOT "C" Contracts. 400-Thousand bags is said to be Folgers'.

The remainder is uncertified coffees, and specialties held by trade houses and local roasters. Please remember, with the exception of the 734K bags of Certifieds (which is a hard number from GCA) this is a soft best guess estimate only.

Dupuy Storage and Forwarding Corp. and Silocaf of New Orleans Inc. are very large and modern bulk coffee processing operations in the New Orleans area. They are both out of service.

Kevin Kelly, at Port Cargo Service in NOLA reported, 'Contrary to what you hear on the national news, 80% of New Orleans is NOT flooded. Less than 50% of the City of New Orleans and Metaire areas are flooded. I have 28 warehouse locations in the metropolitan area, totaling nearly 3,000,000 square feet, and only one warehouse totaling 175,000 square feet has a potential of being flooded'. . . .

In addition to the companies above, there were more than 100 independent specialty coffee retailers in the City of New Orleans."

the nybot's original katrina press release is here. those of us connected to the specialty coffee industry -- that means us regular coffee lovers -- are certainly wishing our friends the independent roaster/retailers the best for the future!

posted by fortune | 7:40 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments