STiR coffee and tea magazine

42 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 4, 2018 (August / September) By Dan Bolton N Coffee Gateway to the USA ouvelle-Orléans remains the steadfast companion of coffee, weathering 300 hundred years of storm and strife as the coffee gateway to the USA. Today it is the No. 1 US port for imported coffee, exceeding tonnage landed in New York for the second year in a row. In 1718 the French Mississippi Company began operations on the banks of the Mississippi River at the first crescent of high ground inland from the Gulf of Mexico. Named for the Duke of Orléans the city prospered as the terminus for cargo-laden flatboats delivering the riches of the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi River valleys. During colonial times small shipments of coffee returned upstream, a favorite of settlers but a market underserved by European colonial powers sourcing coffee in the Middle East. Cuba and the Caribbean islands were the first to cultivate coffee in the Americas. Jesuits planted coffee in Haiti (then known as Saint Domingue) in 1670. Commercial production was well underway by 1734. In 1748 José Antonio Gelabert introduced the first coffee to Cuba which became a major supplier after the Haitian Revolution of 1791. It was from Cuba that the first shipments arrived in New Orleans, still under con- trol of the French until the $11 million Louisiana Purchase, which added the vast upper reaches of the Mississippi to the fledgling US in 1803. In 1802 the port handled 1,438 bags of coffee, a volume that would rise to 530,000 bags by 1857. Ports in New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans dominated the coffee market but in recent years Port NOLA has become the nation's premier coffee handling port, with 14 warehouses, more than 5.5 million square feet of storage space, and six roast- ing facilities within a 20-mile radius. Two of the most modern bulk processing opera- tions are located in New Orleans: Dupuy Storage and Forwarding Corp. and Silocaf of New Orleans Inc., the world's largest coffee silo. All of Folgers coffee, a subsidiary of J.M. Smucker, comes through Port NOLA and is roasted at a 400,000 sq. ft. coffee roasting plant in New Orleans East. Port NOLA's coffee storage warehouses are certified by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). "Our proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean makes Port NOLA the best choice for coffee import," according to Donnell Jackson, manager of media relations at the Port of New Orleans. The Port of New Orleans lands enough coffee annually to make 20 billion cups. Tonnage landed annually is equivalent to 17.5% of the total US coffee market

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