Happy New Year 2010!

I’m in no doubt as to the importance of our website to deliver information and also to be the face of our business to existing and potential customers the world over. I’ve always advocated the importance of the internet. For me, the internet is the mechanism for the delivery of information, thoughts and data to a widespread audience in all corners of the Earth. The beauty of this vehicle is that a relatively small, independent, niche business such as ours can participate in a global marketplace – in all time zones and even in other cultures through language translation tools.

Where I diverge from popular opinion, however, is the value and importance of the internet as a social tool. For me, personal contact with our customers and growers has never been so important. Perhaps because of the internet age, I value this fundamentally important facet more than ever. After all, you cannot have a virtual beer with someone or sit down to a good meal round the virtual table.

The year 2009 was tumultuous in terms of risk management, access to credit, wild foreign exchange fluctuations and general economic chaos. Yet during this time, we have experienced the biggest month of sales in the company’s history since 1996 and a very steady march of new specialty coffee roasters starting up in business. Despite dark economic clouds, I believe 2010 and beyond will hold great potential for those coffee roasters who stick to the basic fact – that fine specialty coffees, well roasted and informatively marketed, will find a ready and willing marketplace.

Coffee by the cup or packet is not expensive, and it is simply impossible to believe that coffee will not follow in the footsteps of so many products (some quite curious such as water!) where price and quality differentiation are fully understood and widely appreciated.

No, £20/kg coffee beans do not taste ten times better than £2/kg coffee beans…any more than a £200 bottle of wine tastes ten times better than a £20 bottle. And while you’re asking, is that Evian that you are drinking?!

Yes, Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance have done marvellous work promoting their aims through coffee but, to be honest, what people really want is fine quality, directly sourced coffee from known and trusted growers who are an integral part of the value chain. At Mercanta, we pay much more than basic baseline support prices, but we only pay it for defined quality which can now be judged and assessed and discussed in the global language of specialty coffee which recognises a coffee scoring at least 80/100 on a comparative cupping form. These coffees can genuinely be considered to be specialty grade and ‘best of crop’ for that particular season. It’s not a nuclear arms race to see who can pay more – we pay more because we want the very pick of the crop for our customers. And 150 roaster clients in 30 countries (many of whose businesses have also thrived in recent difficult times) seem to agree that we do a decent job in that department. Spend a fortune on audits and proof that growers are paid a minimum baseline price…or ask our growers yourself if they like dealing with Mercanta who have no problem paying substantial premiums for fine coffees.

Mercanta is a resource for roasters who want to use the skills of our highly trained team (6 international Cup of Excellence experienced jurors) and purpose built lab and training facilities.

At the start of this new year, we’d like to take the opportunity to thank all the customers who have supported us – some for more than a decade – on this road that has become the specialty coffee movement. I would like to pretend that there was a magic formula, a secret, some proprietary technology that only Mercanta had. But that’s simply not true. We have an excellent team of people here, some of whom are shareholders in the company itself. We are independent and not swayed by corporate edicts like many coffee importers, and we have a focus on finding the best coffees, or not stocking them if we cannot. But there’s no secret…other than doing this complex job of delivering hundreds of different bags and cartons to hundreds of different places, on time and on budget, with reliable and honest advice, skilled staff and a clear focus.

We thought it would be useful also to use the message to clarify a popular misconception about our business compared to many ‘’I Buy, You Ship’’ competitors. Mercanta adds value to finding fine coffee, with our team of people focused on that task, with financing, risk management, logistical, warehousing and cupping lab facilities to support it. Any problems, we will take care of it. Quality not acceptable or late arrivals? We’ll offer alternatives. Draw down contracts? We invented them. Education and training? We have a sister company dedicated to that important field. But if you just want to shift coffee from A to B, then you don’t need a specialist company to do that – you need a freight forwarder. Good luck with that.

We’ll also be tweaking our name in 2010. It may sound cosmetic, but Mercanta The Coffee Hunters Specialty Coffee Merchants will better describe our enterprise going forward. It was my idea from the inception of Mercanta to return to a world where ships bought exotic, exciting, differentiated, rare products from far away to be placed at the disposal of discerning buyers in consumer markets. Indeed, Mercanta is a derivative of the Spanish word mercante (merchant). The consignments of fine green coffees may be sealed away inside 20 foot steel containers on ugly utilitarian container ships now, but hopefully the magic of the products themselves has not been lost.

Wishing all our friends, customers and grower partners a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2010 and beyond and we hope you enjoy the new look website.

Best Regards,

Stephen Hurst
January 2010