Sold, But Not Shipped – Coffee shipping delays can change your roasting plans.

Arabica coffee futures in New York traded as high as 297.35 c/lb during the week before falling to 276.00 c/lb, a range of 2,135 points. The December contract closed Friday at 280.00 c/lb, down approximately 2.5% from the previous week. Robusta moved in the opposite direction, with the January contract closing at USD 3,270/ton, a weekly gain of 2.06%.

In Brazil’s physical market, Arabica coffee ended the week near BRL 1,600.00 per 60-kg bag, practically unchanged from the previous week.

The US dollar recovered some of its losses, rising from around BRL 5.43 to BRL 5.51, helping support coffee prices in reais. The March 2027 Arabica futures contract ended the week at 271.65 c/lb.

Next Thursday, November 12, options on the December contract will expire, followed by First Notice Day (FND) on November 19. This period typically brings considerable movement in futures positions, with liquidations, rolls and adjustments by both longs and shorts. We may see another volatile week as market participants reposition their exposures.

Funds continued increasing their short positions, adding 4,250 contracts in Arabica and 4,767 contracts in Robusta. A record crop, accelerated exports, full warehouses, buyers replenishing supplies and abundant rainfall are factors reinforcing expectations of a better balance between global supply and demand, contributing to the funds’ more bearish stance.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s coffee export market remains extremely busy. Preliminary figures indicate that approximately 5.2 million bags were exported in October, a volume that, if confirmed, would set a new monthly record. Expectations are that November will also maintain a very strong pace, potentially even exceeding October.

These are impressive numbers, but they also reveal an enormous challenge: how can all this coffee be moved while meeting deadlines, contracts and international commitments?

Today, I want to address a subject that rarely receives as much attention as coffee prices, even though it is fundamental to how the market works:

What happens after the coffee is sold?

When a grower sells coffee, the transaction is generally considered complete once price, quantity, quality and delivery terms have been agreed upon. For those involved in exports, however, that is only the beginning.

After the sale come coffee preparation and grading, sample approval, packaging, shipping instructions, vessel space booking, transportation to the port, customs clearance and all the documentation required for the cargo to finally reach its destination.

There are many steps, involving different companies, professionals, systems and deadlines.

If just one of them fails to work as planned, the entire schedule can be compromised.

Brazil has an extraordinary capacity to produce and trade coffee, but shipping all that coffee is an enormous challenge as well.

Imagine a company that has sold coffee for November shipment and, when requesting space on a vessel, discovers that the next available slots are only for mid-December.

The coffee may be ready, the buyer waiting and the contract signed, yet there may still be no space available on the desired sailing.

This is what we call booking: a reservation of space to transport the cargo.

During periods of heavy traffic, securing that reservation can become as difficult as purchasing the coffee itself.

And even after space has been booked, things can change. Vessels are delayed, port calls are rescheduled, terminal receiving windows change, empty containers are not always available, and the deadline for delivering cargo to the port can be extremely tight.

Logistics buffer yards, support areas where already stuffed containers can wait for their shipping window, provide some operational flexibility, especially during periods of heavy cargo concentration. But they also require space, additional handling and storage expenses. Exporters must balance the risk of missing a sailing against the cost of positioning cargo in advance.

The Port of Santos, Brazil’s main gateway for coffee exports, illustrates some of these limitations.

Its navigation channel is approximately 15 meters deep, and in 2026 a project was contracted to deepen it to 16 meters. This will improve operating conditions for larger vessels, which currently must comply with draft restrictions and other operational limitations.

As the global merchant fleet moves toward ever-larger vessels, our infrastructure must keep pace with that transformation.

In extreme situations, difficulty securing space on regular shipping services can lead to extraordinary solutions. In November 2021, during the global logistics crisis, a Cooxupé customer went as far as chartering an entire vessel to collect 125 containers of coffee, equivalent to approximately 45,000 bags, through the Port of Santos. Cooxupé itself publicly reported the operation, demonstrating just how far a company may need to go to secure its supply.

The numbers help illustrate the scale of the problem. According to a Cecafé survey, in 2025 an average of 55% of the vessels monitored experienced delays or changes to their port calls at Brazil’s main ports. Approximately 602,000 bags per month failed to ship as scheduled, while exporters incurred millions in additional expenses as a result of these bottlenecks.

Those bags did not disappear, nor do they necessarily represent lost sales. They were volumes that had to wait for new shipping opportunities, causing delays, costs and changes throughout the supply chain.

There is an operational cost that often goes unnoticed. When a shipment is delayed, expenses start piling up: pre-stacking, the advance storage of stuffed containers before they enter the port terminal; changes to deadlines, the cut-off times for cargo and documentation; transportation rescheduling; additional handling and storage; and, depending on the circumstances, detention and demurrage, charges related to holding or using containers beyond the agreed free-time periods.

These may seem like simple tasks, but they become complex because of the volume involved, and much of the process is often beyond our control.

The most complicated part is that these expenses can accumulate. A vessel is delayed, the terminal changes its schedule, a container remains in storage for additional days, transportation must be rearranged, and an operation that initially looked financially sound begins to lose margin. In some cases, these extra costs are not caused by a direct failure on the exporter’s part, but by bottlenecks involving several participants in the supply chain.

And who pays the bill?

A commercial transaction can show an attractive margin when it is negotiated and end up producing a much lower return than expected, simply because logistics costs have consumed a significant share of profitability. In more complicated situations, what looked like a good deal can even turn into a loss.

In my earlier article, “The Invisible Inventory,” I made a calculation based on approximately 122 million bags exported worldwide each year and a hypothetical average ocean transit time of 30 days. The result suggested that close to 10 million bags of coffee could be continuously at sea. It was not a measured inventory figure, just a way to illustrate the amount of coffee moving around the planet. That flow must keep moving continuously.

Much of the international coffee industry organizes its supply with lean inventories, using the just-in-time concept: receiving raw materials as they are needed for production, reducing tied-up capital and storage costs.

It is an efficient system as long as deadlines are met. But when coffee scheduled to arrive in a particular week is delayed by 30 or 45 days, a roaster may need to source from another origin, use safety stocks, adjust its blends or change its roasting schedule.

A shipment that fails to leave Brazil can have commercial consequences on the other side of the world. Believe me, it is serious.

There is also the financial side. Depending on contractual terms, delays can change payment schedules, create additional financing needs and even require adjustments to hedge positions, especially when financial maturities no longer match the physical shipping schedule.

All of this requires capital, planning and the ability to manage unexpected events.

The hardest cost to calculate is the damage to commercial relationships.

Imagine a buyer who planned production around the expected arrival of a particular coffee. That buyer does not necessarily want to hear about port congestion, difficulties with a shipping line or changes to a vessel’s schedule. The buyer wants to receive what was purchased, under the agreed terms. And is right to demand it.

On the other hand, we also need to recognize that not every delay means the exporter is at fault. There are structural limitations, external circumstances and operational changes over which no individual company has absolute control.

That does not remove the responsibility to plan properly, carry out the steps within one’s control, anticipate risks and, above all, keep the buyer informed.

Communication alone will not solve a logistics problem, but it can prevent an operational issue from turning into a breakdown in the commercial relationship.

When we talk about the competitiveness of Brazilian coffee, we usually think of productivity, quality, production costs, exchange rates and differentials. We should also consider the ability to deliver consistently, predictably and reliably.

Brazilian coffee growers can do an excellent job in the field, produce outstanding coffee and achieve very good returns. But for that coffee to reach a consumer’s cup at destination, a long chain of operations must work properly.

International trade is not just about finding buyers. It depends on infrastructure, logistics, financing, quality, commitment and trust among everyone involved.

Perhaps this is one of the least visible aspects of the coffee market: a sale can be negotiated in a matter of minutes, yet fulfilling it requires months of work and coordination.

Sold, But Not Shipped – 08 November 2026 By Gustavo Matias