STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 37 Moving coffee from the farm to the consumer involves a complex series of interconnected steps that often face geopolitical, environmental, and bureaucratic challenges. Photo credit: Mountain Harvest "We knew that exporting direct would be the best route to keeping more of the value of our specialty coffee, since we would not be accepting the price set by a local cooperative or local green buyer," says Marianella Baez Jost, founder of Farm- ers Project Specialty Coffee and owner of Café Con Amor in Costa Rica. As Armbrust-Asselin explains, three critical phases encom- pass inbound logistics: Open, Afloat, and In Store. The Open stage covers the period when a coffee is still in its country of origin and follows the contracted lot from farm to port. Much of inbound logistics involves paperwork, creating a careful, de- tailed document trail that accompanies the coffee as it travels to its destination. This includes creating the required shipping in- structions, collecting required documents, preparing for cus- toms entry, and generating the Bill of Lading (BOL). The BOL is a crucial document that organizes all the neces- sary information in one place and shows who owns the coffee during transit. "It's not just a shipping document, it functions as a receipt, it's a contract, and it's also like a title document," Arm- brust-Asselin says. "It brings together logistics, quality, and traceability, and can be used much like a title document for let- ters of credit and collections." Most importers work with trusted exporters to handle the first leg of the coffee's journey. This is where correct documen- tation, especially the BOL, and close communication are essen- tial. Certain documents must be filed with shipping companies or customs agencies at specific times before the cargo is loaded, and everyone involved needs to know exactly who is responsible for what and when. Traceability is becoming increasingly important, making it even more critical that all paperwork is accurate and verifiable. "We need to understand not only where [the coffee] is at every point," Armbrust-Asselin says, "but also who's been handling it, that it's been handled according to regulations, and that every- thing is compliant."

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