colombian coffee

Internal Commercialization

With over 500 thousand coffee growers and over 800 thousand hectares of coffee, Colombia is the second largest coffee producing country in the world. Each year about 11 million bags (of 60 kg each) are produced by these 500 thousand coffee growers. The infrastructure required to buy, mill and export all this coffee is significant.

The Co-operative System

Since there are so many coffee growers, located in 18 different departments in the country, the FNC has for the last 50 years supported a network of coffee co-operatives, of which today there are 40 around the major coffee producing regions. These coffee co-operatives act as a purchasing agent of the FNC. The co-operatives are financed by the FNC to purchase parchment coffee in 495 purchasing points around the country.

Apart from the co-operatives infrastructure most coffee exporters also have their own purchasing points around the country. There are over 50 authorized coffee exporters, of which Carcafe (Volcafe) and the FNC are the biggest exporters.

The FNC's Role in the Internal Market

The FNC acts as a "buyer of last resort", offering coffee growers a transparent price. Every day, after the market close the FNC publishes its price for average quality coffee, which is known as the Precio Interno (Internal Price). This price is calculated daily depending on the closing price of the "C" market, the official exchange rate and the distance from the purchasing point to the main export ports. This internal price is a base price for all other parchment coffee buyers.

Coffee growers can decide to sell their coffee to the FNC (directly or through its co-operatives) or to parchment buyers or exporters.

How Coffee is Purchased

Since most coffee growers have their own beneficio (de-pulper and fermentation tanks) and drying facilities, most of the coffee purchased internally is dry parchment coffee. The majority of the coffee sold is paid according to its physical quality.

The main metric used in Colombia to determine the physical quality is known as "factor de rendimiento" (which translates as "yield factor"). It is calculated taking a given sample (e.g., 250 gr) of a lot of dry parchment coffee being sold by a coffee grower. The sample is milled and then extracting from the sample all physical defects and any beans below screen 13/64". The resulting beans are weighed and then the following formula is used to calculate the factor de rendimiento:

The result would be the amount of kg of that specific quality parchment coffee needed to produce one 70 kg bag of export quality green coffee.

It is increasingly frequent to see some purchasing points where they also cup the coffee to determine if the parchment coffee being purchased is free of cup defects.

Dry Milling and Exporting

Dry parchment coffee is then taken to dry mills owned by co-operatives, Almacafe (FNC), exporters and particulars, where the parchment is removed, sorted and classified by screen size, density and color.

Export-quality green coffee (known generally as excelso) is bagged in fique (a natural fiber) bags, each weighing 70 kg net. Traditional quality denominations in Colombia are the following:

In order to guarantee the quality of all green coffee exported, all green coffee lots are analyzed at port by the FNC agents before allowing the export. The FNC analyzes compliance with defect norms, screen sizes and cup quality. Any coffee deemed not to comply with export quality norms is not allowed to be exported.