News
Our Neighbourhood
The last 24 months have been a wild ride. Together we’ve navigated a few lockdowns, a global pandemic, a change to a 40-year trading relationship with the EU, and countless interruptions, difficulties and uncertainties.
Yet, thanks to your support, added to the awesome work of our team, we’re still here, roasting awesome coffee and being in the business of making that awesome coffee easy to brew, hopefully bringing a smile to your day on the way.
You can’t have escaped the news that the price of everything is going up, and sadly we’re not immune to this. In fact, we’ve had to absorb some record increases, thanks to the following:
– A severe frost in some of Brazil’s coffee growing regions, resulting in a loss of some of the crop (the exact result is to be determined) but it has meant a 30-40% rise in the price of coffee worldwide, which in turn means our suppliers in Posses & Jacutinga have also raised their prices. This is a good thing, as for too long it was hovering near the breakeven cost. We pay well above the global rate for our coffee, but price increases affect the whole coffee ecosystem, and we’re not immune to that. We could buy inferior coffee as it’s cheaper, but that goes against pretty much everything we believe in.
– A massive, frankly ridiculous increase in the cost of shipping containers. Last year, we paid approx. $1,900 USD to ship a container from Santos in Brazil to London or Felixstowe. This year, it’s more than 5 times the price, at a price of over $9,000 USD per container. This isn’t an environmental offsetting cost (which we’d willingly pay), this is just profiteering on the part of the global shipping lines, who are on track to make more profit in this financial year than they have in the last 10 years combined. There’s been major disruption caused because of Covid, but that doesn’t explain the massive hike in rates.
– The extra cost of importing, thanks to the time delays caused by Brexit related customs checks, the scarcity of UK hauliers, and the subsequent price rises seen in the UK too, which affects moving coffee from the port quayside to the warehouse, and then every time we receive coffee from the warehouse into the roastery.
– The extra cost of shipping in packaging, from our recyclable bags that are manufactured in China, to the cardboard we use for despatching orders.
All these factors mean we have to increase some of the prices of the coffees on our site, and we hope this will be the last time they have to rise this year. We’ve already absorbed as much as we can, and we hate to put prices up, because we believe great coffee should be in everyone’s reach, but we want to be transparent about increases & why they occur.
Subscriptions will stay te same price for now, but we’re evaluating how long we can keep these at the same price. If you have any queries about this, please do let us know, at [email protected]
Team NCR. x
