Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that our newsletter has changed its tone. Less storytelling, more figures. More explanations about origins, contracts and the way coffee makes its way to us. This campaign is called “Price transparency”. It stems from a simple reality: on 1 June 2024, Maison Soleil’s prices will change. We chose to tell you why, plainly.
Three shocks in a single year
In 2024, the world coffee market is going through one of its most volatile phases in decades. Three phenomena combined.
Anticipation of the European deforestation regulation. European importers rushed to buy and secure volumes ahead of the new traceability requirements, creating a bottleneck on the physical market.
The Red Sea attacks. Transit through Suez is disrupted. Vietnamese coffee has to sail around Africa, adding two to three weeks to lead times and sending freight costs soaring.
The parabolic surge in prices. Robusta brushed against 4,800 dollars a tonne in the summer of 2024, up [CHIFFRE:pourcentage de hausse du robusta] on 2023. Arabica passed 2.70 dollars a pound in New York. Even the biggest industrial roasters warned about cost pressure.
A differentiated increase
Our classic origins — Ethiopia, Colombia, Brazil, Guatemala, Kenya, Peru, Honduras — are bought through specialist traders on very tight markets. Their cost rose by around [CHIFFRE:pourcentage de hausse des origines classiques] over the year.
Our direct trade origins — the five cooperatives of French-speaking Africa — are protected by multi-year floor-price contracts signed as early as 2021 or 2022. In theory, we could leave these products untouched. But we made an ethical choice: to share part of the shock with our producer partners, themselves hit by input inflation. Their adjustment remains moderate, between [CHIFFRE:fourchette basse en pourcentage] and [CHIFFRE:fourchette haute en pourcentage].
In practice, the 1 June 2024 increase will not apply in the same way to all our products. The origins most exposed to the spot market will see a sharper revision. Direct trade origins will see a contained increase. Subscriptions will change slightly.
We could have reduced quality, widened lots, swapped an origin for a cheaper one. That is not our project. Our mission is to make specialty coffee understandable and accessible, while paying producers fairly.
Our unexpected advantage
Since our first contracts in 2021, we have required plot GPS coordinates from every partner cooperative. It was not mandatory back then: it was good direct trade practice. Today, as traceability requirements tighten, that requirement becomes an asset. We were ready before we had to be. That is the story of our relaunch campaign starting in 2025: “We were doing it before it was mandatory.”
In the meantime, thank you for your trust. If you have questions about this increase or about how our direct trade contracts work, our team remains available. Transparency is not a marketing operation: it is the way we have always wanted to trade.