Greetings Cooperative Coffees’ Green Buyers,
We have updated the Sales Price Forecast. You can view your roastery’s specific forecast here.
We have received enough tariff refunds to pay members back for tariffs in full as of August 13th, 2026. At this time there were still USD $17,312 of tariff costs in unsold inventory. This will be returned in a final instalment once those coffees have been completely sold.
Default C Price Assumption
We originally planned to issue this forecast the week of August 17 but delayed it as traders moved their September positions into December ahead of the August 21 first notice day. As expected, December prices rose sharply but remained too volatile to provide a reliable benchmark. Rather than assume a C price of $3.40 in December, we waited as the market gradually returned to levels near our July forecast. The market remains volatile, but after two days of relatively consistent closing prices, we believe this provides a reasonable snapshot of where things stand today.
$3.10 through Dec 2026 (was 3.10)
$3.00 through March 2027 (was 3.1)
$3.00 through July 2027 (was 3.00)
$2.90 for any future months (was 2.90)
Relevant Market Intelligence
We’ve been reporting now for several months about the upcoming Brazil “supercrop” that is likely to exert significant downward pressure on coffee prices in the medium term. However, there is growing worry about the effect of this year’s El Niño phenomenon which will likely have a considerable effect on coffee harvests in 2027. Our sourcing team has been holding harvest close meetings with partners in Central America as we begin preparations for our Northern Harvest campaign for the 2026/2027 crop. COMSA/APROCOMSA (Honduras), Triunfo Verde (Mexico) and UCA Miraflor (Nicaragua) are all reporting rain levels well below what is usually expected this rainy season, when coffee trees enter the crucial fruit development stage of their reproductive cycle. Already there is a high expectation of underdeveloped beans, empty fruit (granos vanos) and generally lower yields and quality for 2027.
This situation lends itself to continued high volatility in coffee markets as the market transitions from the inverted, record-high prices and historically low arabica stocks of 2025/26, to a potentially record Brazilian crop in 2026/27, followed by the risk of lower production across many origins in 2027/28 as a strong El Niño potentially impacts flowering and fruit development.
Pressures pushing prices up ↑
ICE arabica stocks remain exceptionally low. Certified stocks are around a multi-year low, reinforcing tight nearby availability even though the new-crop outlook is much larger.
Brazilian harvest is still behind normal pace. Even with recent acceleration, the crop remains behind last year and the five-year average. Earlier excessive rainfall caused fruit drop and delayed harvesting/drying. This means the anticipated supply increase has not yet fully reached the physical market.
Producer selling remains relatively restrained. There are reports of producers retaining supply, in part due to price speculation, limiting the amount of coffee immediately entering the market.
Colombia remains a short-term supply/logistics risk. The earthquake did not cause major damage to coffee production infrastructure, but it temporarily disrupted coffee flows. More importantly, Colombia's coffee federation now sees El Niño as a substantially greater threat to production than the earthquake itself.
Colombian production outlook has deteriorated. The Colombian federation expects production to fall from 13.7 million bags in 2025 to around 12.5 million in 2026, attributing the decline largely to earlier excessive rains and the developing El Niño.
El Niño is becoming a major weather risk. There are reports of a very strong El Niño developing during the 2026–27 period. For coffee, this raises risks particularly for Vietnam and Indonesia's robusta production and potentially Brazil's subsequent crop.
The market has demonstrated strong sensitivity to supply disruptions. Recent reports show arabica rallying sharply when harvest delays, low stocks, or supply disruptions become the dominant narrative. This suggests considerable upside volatility remains even within a fundamentally bearish medium-term outlook.
Pressures pushing prices down ↓
Below-normal rainfall in Brazil should speed up the pace of the country's coffee harvest, a bearish factor for prices.
The latest USDA biannual forecast was bearish for coffee prices. On July 22, the USDA forecast that global coffee output in the 2026-27 season will rise by 6.0% (10.8 million bags) to a record 189.7 million bags, mainly due to improved growing conditions in Brazil.