As of today, Feb 11, 2025, the global coffee market is facing a significant supply deficit.

Volcafe, a leading coffee trading firm, projects a global arabica coffee deficit of 8.5 million bags for the 2025/26 season, an increase from the 5.5 million bag deficit in 2024/25. 

8.5 MILLION bags! These are 60kilo bags so about 132 pounds each.

That’s a SHORTAGE of over 1.1 BILLION pounds. Billion with a B.

Key Factors Contributing to the Deficit:

1.  Global Climate Change: Extended droughts in Brazil, the world's largest arabica producer, have severely impacted coffee production. Volcafe has reduced its 2025/26 Brazil arabica coffee production estimate by about 11 million bags due to these conditions. Farms in Central America are being hit even harder from overwhelming rain.
2.  Supply Chain Disruptions: Global supply chain issues, including shipping delays and labor shortages and tariff based trade war fears, have further constrained coffee availability, exacerbating the supply-demand imbalance. Threats of tariffs in Mexico and Colombia combined with record high prices for commercial coffee have caused major disruptions and in some cases stopped the flow of coffee entirely.
3. Increased Demand: Despite rising prices, global demand for coffee remains strong for now, intensifying the pressure on limited supplies. Unsure how long this will last in the face of dramatic price increases across the board.

These factors have led to record-high coffee prices, with arabica futures reaching above $4.30 per pound amid panic buying. 

The combination of reduced supply and sustained demand suggests that the coffee market will continue to experience tight conditions throughout 2025 and well into 2026.

 If you are a coffee roasters and you haven’t already contracted out all the coffee you will need through Q1 2026 you might want to check and see if there is any coffee to buy at any of the importers you work with.

If you are a coffee drinker you need to be actively supporting your local roaster by buying their coffee drinks and their beans now and the rest of the year. Stop buying low priced semi commercial stuff and support your local coffee roasters and coffee shops. And prepare to pay 15-40% more for all coffee beans. The lower the price it was before the higher the percentage increase it will see.

We buy all of our coffee on fixed price, forward contracts so our costs haven’t changed and therefore our prices haven’t changed. For the upcoming Central American harvest we are talking with our producer partners to pay more to cover their increased costs from labor and finance so the new crop coffees in the fall will be a little more for sure.

See how we are aiming to break this entire broken supply chain