Mediocre, poor coffee blamed for price fall

Excess of mediocre and poor coffee in the market is blamed for the historic low coffee prices.

Falling consumption despite the low prices in coffee drinking European nations like Germany, is a sign that the available coffee is not meeting the quality standards demanded by the consumer, Ernesto Illy, president of the Trieste-based world espresso leader illycaffe said on Saturday.

Illy was in Bangalore to hand over the second "India Coffee Quality Prize for Espresso". D M Purnesh of Classic Coffee & Spices bagged the award and $10,000 cash prize while the first and second runners-up were H V Kejriwal of the Sanjignekhan Estate and Anantha Subramanya of YelnoorKhan-A-Estates, respectively. They took home $7,000 and $5,000.

Speaking to mediapersons after delivering his special talk on 'The Importance of Drying Process of Coffee', he said that the influx of the robusta variety has its share in the fall too.

Adding robusta with a 2.5 per cent caffeine level has more than double the levels available in arabica. In Germany, for instance, during 1993-98, per capita consumption of coffee fell from 7.9 kg to 7.1 kg.

Simultaneously, robusta imports grew from 17 per cent to 27 per cent of total coffee imports. This effectively maintained the per capita consumption of caffeine at 110 gms a year, he said.

The need now is to strike a balance between the arabica and robusta varieties. The award enables the 10 shortlisted finalists from 60 received entries to join the ranks of suppliers of coffee beans to illy. The company, services 6.5 million cups of its high-end espresso blend everyday.