Bringing a mixed farm-to-table container to Europe - Part I

It's been almost two years since our first and last marine container shipment from Brazil. Back in early 2023, we had consolidated coffees from Jorge, Lucas, and Henrique at Farmers Coffee in Espírito Santo to export through the Vitória port. Turned out that the equipment and empty containers were short, and the shipment got further and further delayed. And when the export finally happened, the container had to go South to São Paulo anyway to take a bigger ship across the Atlantic.

Also, given our first appearance on the marine shipment landscape, our container was flagged twice for scanning in Rotterdam and Hamburg, which caused additional costs and further delays.

As a result, we defined several main objectives for this next shipment:

• Faster end-to-end execution time

• Lower cost per kg and cbm

• Increase in volume and value

In order to get there, we decided to export through Santos, Brazil's main port in the Southeast region, near São Paulo. With our partners at Kühne + Nagel, we identified a terminal in Guarujá (near Santos) that can consolidate mixed shipments from multiple sources.

At the end of November 2025, we gave our growers the green light to send their respective pieces to the terminal.

900kg of green coffee from Lucas Venturim ready to be shipped from Espírito Santo

Despite good preparation, it is still impressive to me that every shipment feels like having its own life and challenges - something can always go wrong.

In our case, we deliberately went ahead despite the Christmas holidays because we are running out of some coffee options here in Switzerland.

That resulted in some hectic days around New Year's, when two of three arrivals at the Guarujá terminal were not adequately scheduled and had to wait for hours before being allowed to unload.

On top of that, one transport company paid little attention to our coffee cherry (Cascara) boxes, which ended up broken at the terminal and are now being replaced. So some additional cost could not be avoided.

Damaged Cascara boxes in Guarujá

On the other hand, container costs have come down in recent years. Two years ago, we paid USD 2'200 for a 20" food-grade container; this time, it will be almost half of this.

At this moment, our shipment is on track. 5'460kg of green beans and 576kg of dried coffee cherries are being stuffed in the container as I write these lines.

The documentation has been submitted, and our ship, the Maersk Leticia, is scheduled to depart on the 20th of January. At the moment, it is making its way from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and is fully on track.

Let's see how this journey will go and what surprises await us - more on this in Part II in a couple of weeks...  

Have you already given thoughts to the behind-the-scenes of your beloved morning cup? Keep in the loop!