Bolivia Cup of Excellence Auction Shows Strong Demand for Top Coffee
After five years of conducting the Cup of Excellence program and in what most would consider a depressed economy, thirty award-winning farmers received record-breaking prices for their coffee during the annual online auction. The coffees being auctioned had been awarded the prestigious Cup of Excellence by an international jury in Caranavi, Bolivia some five weeks earlier, and samples of each lot had been sent across the globe to interested roasters. The first place coffee received a record premium price of $35.05/lb in a country where low prices for coffee are still commonplace
Bolivia’s mostly cooperative winning farmers saw their average price per pound rise to over $7.77/lb and the total auction proceeds go up by over $100,000 from the year before. Yesterday’s online auction was expected to be fierce as there had been seven Presidential Awards among the thirty winners. These are coffees that score over 90 points on the last cupping day by the international jury.
“Seven presidential award winners is a record for the Cup of Excellence program and shows the incredible quality of this year’s harvest,” explained Susie Spindler, Executive Director of The Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Inc. “Professional cuppers just do not normally give out a score of 90 for very many coffees so an international jury of 24 cuppers giving out multiple Presidential Awards is very special.”
Bolivia is a small coffee producer but for a number of years has been focusing on top quality coffees. The prices at auction will provide the needed incentive for the Bolivian cooperatives to support their small farmer members that produce great coffee. It is well known that this rare quality will continue to be highly sought after throughout the world among roasters looking to differentiate their businesses.
The successful buyers are scattered geographically and will be roasting these coffees to serve to their customers in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Ireland, Norway, Japan, Taiwan, So. Korea, Denmark, Lithuania, and Iceland. There were some companies bidding for the first time but no one seemed surprised at the pace of the auction or how dedicated some of the buyers were in purchasing a Cup of Excellence coffee.
The 2009 Bolivia program is managed with a partnership between the non-profit Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Inc., The Federacion de Caficultores Exportadores de Bolivia and The Rural Competitiveness Project funded by The United States Agency for International Development.