Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/491374
30 STiR tea & coffee industry international Despite these advantages liners present logisti- cal issues. Once delivered the coffee is stored in si- los with each shipment individually marked. When filled the silos are efficient storage but when half- full a silo holds wasted space. Why not just pour a new shipment of beans into the half-filled silo? Pouring new beans on top invalidates ICE cer- tifications for both shipments. The cost of electric- ity in maintaining the silos is another concern due to rising energy prices. When an individual sack of coffee is dam- aged by water or mold, the bags can be isolated or discarded. This is not possible with an entire container. An infestation or mold could potentially damage or destroy the entire shipment. According to Günter Brockhaus at NKG Kala (Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, Hamburg), such dam- age to coffee shipped in bulk is almost unheard of unless there is a hole in the container. In his experi- ence, when it comes to shipping in small individual sacks, claims for damages can be as much as five or six times higher. Based on conversations with American friends and business partners, Brockhaus thinks "many will continue to use (the old-fashioned) bags, be- cause they believe it is better quality," and he as- sumes, "it's a matter of nostalgia." He knows that people do not get excited think- ing about a silo full of coffee the same way they do when imagining sacks of coffee piled high on the roasting floor. Dupuy Storage & Forwarding in New Orleans was the first to handle bulk shipments in 1992. J.M. Smucker (Folgers) and Kraft Foods (Yuban and Maxwell House) currently accept bulk cof- fee shipments of robusta. They also accept some arabica delivered in bulk under a private contract. European roasters, in contrast, receive as much as Bulk loading coffee into trucks is more efficient than by forklift. Photos courtesy Vollers, Port & Commodity Logistics Standard Sack Weights 90% of their coffee in bulk shipments. More critically there is a lack of silo capacity in the United States. Before coffee can be received in bulk, companies will have to upgrade their fa- cilities. Can these firms afford to keep off-loading coffee sacks in the traditional manner? Brockhaus insists that if his company had not modified their system, he would already have gone out of business. Eighty percent of his coffee ar- rives in bulk, and when the new regulations come into effect in December 2015, it is only logical that this percentage will increase. Failing to address efficiencies in logistics by continuing "business as usual" could very well make it difficult for some companies to remain competitive, he said. Walking into Vollers offices in Bremen, there are paintings on the wall harkening back to an ear- lier age of shipping. While the sacks of coffee lying on the floor are reminiscent of those times gone by, the coffee in the warehouse downstairs is being transferred from container to silos and then loaded into trucks in the most modern manner available. Sacks of coffee continue to arrive in the ware- house from various regions but the number grows less each year. Looking over the remaining sacks one can easily imagine a day when they become a thing of the past. Kilos Pounds Origin 70 154.32 Colombia and Bolivia 69 152.15 Central America 60 132.30 Brazil, Africa, Asia 59.88 132 Swiss Water Decaf 50 110.23 Yemen, India (Malabar) 45.36 100 Hawaii, Puerto Rico