Our new season Brazilians land from February, and before they hit your cup, we want to be straight with you about what's been happening with pricing this year. Short version: it's been a year for the record books.
The C Market price for arabica (the global commodity benchmark) has reached heights nobody saw coming. A drought-battered 2024 harvest, fresh tariffs, looming EU regulations, and daily market swings that have left even seasoned buyers wide-eyed. Because Brazilian coffees are priced using a differential model tied directly to the C Market (more on that shortly), all that volatility hits the green coffee cost hard. That's before we layer on the quality premiums that get us coffee actually worth drinking.
And here's the kicker. These elevated baseline prices don't just affect what we pay for beans. They ripple right through the supply chain. Importers and exporters need to borrow more to finance coffee at these levels, and with interest rates still high globally, those financing costs have ballooned. Those costs land on roasters like us, and eventually on the businesses and cafés we supply.
There is genuinely good news in all this. Brazilian producers are pulling in record earnings, and many are pouring it back into worker housing, schools, and sustainability projects. That's the kind of impact we love seeing. But the reality stands: high-quality Brazilian coffee costs more this year, full stop.
Most of the industry agrees this elevated pricing is the new normal. Climate-driven weather shocks, growing global demand, and historically low inventories all suggest we've moved into a structurally higher baseline for coffee. Margin management gets trickier, sure. But this shift also means earnings for producers worldwide are finally heading in the right direction.
Transparency, quality, and responsible sourcing have always been non-negotiable for us. So we sat down with our Green Buyer Roland Glew for the unfiltered version of what's going on. Here's the conversation.
The C Market explained: coffee's global benchmark
Before we get into Brazil specifically, a quick primer on global coffee pricing helps. The "C Market" (officially the New York Coffee Exchange) is where arabica trades as a commodity, much like oil or wheat. It sets a baseline price per pound that swings daily based on supply, demand, and a healthy dose of speculation.
Here's the crucial bit. The C Market price is just a starting point. For most of coffee's history, that starting point has been below what it actually costs to grow quality coffee sustainably. That's exactly why specialty roasters like us pay premiums (often substantial ones) above the C Market price. We're paying for quality, for sustainability, and for the producers being able to make a living from their work.
So when this article talks about "market prices," we're talking about the C Market baseline. Not what we pay our producers. We always pay considerably more.
Why Brazil plays by its own rules
Brazil works differently from most origins we source from. What makes it so distinct?
Roland: Brazil is genuinely unique in the coffee world, and it comes down to scale. A farm like Limoncillo in Nicaragua might produce around 3,000 bags using maybe 300 harvesters. Compare that to Nova Aliança in Brazil. They produce 6,000 to 8,000 bags with fewer than 30 full-time workers.
That efficiency means Brazil's cost of production is dramatically lower than anywhere else. And because they're such a massive force in the market (Brazil grows around 40% of the world's coffee), they've historically driven the C Market baseline down through sheer volume. For decades, the C Market has essentially been set by the lowest price Brazil's most efficient farms could accept.
So we buy Brazilian coffee on what's called a "differential" – a premium above (or sometimes below) the C Market price. For the quality coffees we're after, we're paying well above that baseline. It's a different structure to most other origins, where we work out what's sustainable for the producer and lock that in year to year, basically ignoring the C Market.
That sounds risky for the producers. Why would they want to operate that way?
Roland: Honestly, it works for them because they've got the financial cushion to play the long game. A smallholder in Guatemala needing money now to pay workers or invest in next year's crop can't gamble on C Market swings. They need certainty. That's why we agree fixed prices with them regardless of what the market does.
The Brazilian producers we work with, particularly the larger operations, have access to bank financing and reserves. They can watch the C Market, time when they lock in their price, and maximise returns. In a tight year, they've got reserves from previous good ones to lean on.
And here's the thing. Even when the C Market was historically low, Brazilian producers on a differential with quality premiums were still making decent money because their production costs are so much lower. We're always open to other pricing structures if they'd prefer, but honestly, they're all really happy with the differential system.
When we buy on a differential, we make sure we're paying a substantial premium for the quality we want. That premium gets added on top of whatever the C Market is doing, which is the key factor.
What shifted in 2025
So what's actually happened this year to push prices this high?
Roland: [laughs] If I could give you a definitive answer to that, I'd be a wealthy man. The truth is, nobody in the industry – not importers, not exporters, not even producers – really understands exactly why the C Market has behaved the way it has this year.
Some context: the C Market right now is hovering around $3.55 USD per pound. Five years ago it was much lower. A few months back, we hit $4.30 per pound. That's 80 cents above where we are today, and those were historic highs. For perspective, the C Market spent most of the last 40 years between 80 cents and $1.50 per pound.
Remember, these are baseline commodity prices. Our quality premiums sit on top. But when that baseline jumps from $1.50 to $4.30, it dramatically changes what we end up paying, even with the same premium percentage.
That's a massive jump. What's driving it?
Roland: A perfect storm, really. And all the factors are feeding each other.
First, harvest expectations. 2024 was rough. Severe drought hammered yields. So expectations for 2025 were high. When the harvest came in as "reasonable but not great," that spooked the market. Markets don't just respond to reality. They respond to expectations and fear.
Second, geopolitical uncertainty. In August, the US imposed a 50% tariff on Brazilian coffee, later partially rolled back. The world's largest coffee importer suddenly made Brazilian imports significantly more expensive, and nobody knew how long it would last or what it meant for supply chains. Even though we're not importing into the US, when the world's biggest buyer changes the rules, every market feels it.
Third, the EU's anti-deforestation legislation. It's been delayed, but the uncertainty around its rollout added another layer of worry.
And fourth, which matters more than people realise, we've seen volatility not just in price levels but in daily movements. The C Market has been swinging wildly within hours, not just day to day. That kind of volatility makes everyone jumpy, and jumpy markets are expensive markets.
You mentioned these coffees were bought in 2025. How does timing play into all this?
Roland: Good question. The Brazilian harvest runs June through August, but you don't export immediately after. The coffee needs to be prepared and rested. Export starts around September, and the really top quality lots we're after don't come out until November or December.
With the differential system, you can lock your price any time before export, but not after. So we, our importers, and our exporters are all making strategic calls about when to lock in based on what the C Market's doing.
This year, that timing meant we were locking in prices during some of those historic highs. Even though the C Market has eased a bit now, we bought when the baseline was at $4+ per pound, before our quality premiums were even added.
The ripple effect across other origins
How does what's happening in Brazil compare to other origins we work with?
Roland: This is actually a fascinating shift. Brazilian producers on the differential model are doing phenomenally well this year. Sometimes even better than Central American producers who we pay fixed sustainable prices to. A Brazilian producer could easily be earning two or three times what they were a couple of years ago.
Is that fair? Reasonable? Right? Those are tough questions. But I'm not going to begrudge them, especially given what's been happening everywhere else.
In the rest of the coffee-growing world, things are actually getting more balanced. For years we've been paying sustainable prices to our producer partners in Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador. Prices well above the C Market that ensure they can cover costs and invest in quality. But historically, many producers selling at or near C Market prices to other buyers were losing money.
Now, with the C Market rising, even producers who don't have specialty relationships are finally being paid above the cost of production. That's huge. We're seeing young people show interest in coffee farming again. Some farms that had closed are reopening. Labour shortages are still very real, but there's hope back in the system.
For decades, most coffee producers working at or near commodity prices were either losing money or barely scraping by. Now, for the first time in a long stretch, the baseline has climbed high enough that they can actually make some money. Not a fortune, but enough to keep going sustainably.
And in Brazil specifically, what are producers doing with these higher prices?
Roland: This is why we're so careful about who we buy from in Brazil. We want this money landing in places where it'll create real positive change.
Take Nova Aliança. They're doing well financially from us this year, yes. But they've immediately reinvested that into updated worker housing, supporting local schools, community outreach, and making the farm more sustainable.
Our sourcing choices aren't about chasing the lowest possible price for ourselves. They're about making sure that when we do pay more (which we are this year), it's going to genuinely good places.
The costs you don't see on the invoice
When the C Market goes up 50 cents per pound and we're paying our premium on top of that, does that translate to 50 cents more in our final costs?
Roland: Wish it were that simple. It actually costs us significantly more than just that increase, and this is something most people don't realise.
We don't buy directly from producers. We work with exporters in Brazil and importers here in New Zealand (and over in the UK). They buy and sell the coffee to us, which means they need capital to do that. They're borrowing from banks to finance these purchases. When they ship coffee, they own it until they sell it to us, which means they've got money tied up in stock.
Here's where it gets expensive: interest rates.
Globally, interest rates are much higher than they were 10 to 15 years ago. Lending isn't cheap anymore. So every time coffee prices climb, importers and exporters need to borrow more, and that borrowed money costs them more in interest.
For bigger importers, this is becoming critical. They're buying and selling huge volumes, and they're genuinely struggling to fund the volume they need because it all costs so much more than it used to. They know they can sell it. That's not the problem. They literally don't have enough capital to buy what they need.
They're adapting, they're getting better at managing it, but their costs are rising. They pass those costs to us, and we have to pass them along.
That elevated C Market price creates higher operational costs throughout the entire supply chain. It's an extra layer that pushes prices up beyond just the raw commodity cost. And I don't see that going away soon.
Where things go from here
The big question: will prices come back down?
Roland: Nobody knows for certain, but I'll tell you what most people in the industry are thinking.
It seems very unlikely the C Market drops back to where it was two or three years ago. Whether it'll stay at this year's levels or push higher next year is anyone's guess. Most people I've spoken to agree that with the market around $3.50 now, we'd be genuinely surprised to see it drop below $3 next year.
Remember, historically the C Market spent 40 years between 80 cents and $1.50. Being at $3 or more now actually feels roughly in line with inflation across that period. What's striking is that it didn't happen gradually. The C Market stayed artificially low for decades, then suddenly shot up over the past few years.
I think it might drop back a bit, but not by much. From a purely economic angle, if we have another bad harvest in Brazil, or problems with Vietnamese robusta production (which also impacts arabica pricing), we could easily see the C Market climb to $5 per pound.
So this is the new normal?
Roland: I think so, yes. Climate change means extreme weather events are getting more common in coffee-growing regions. Global demand keeps rising, particularly in places like China. Coffee inventories sit at historically low levels.
All of that points to sustained higher C Market pricing. We're going to do everything we can to keep our pricing stable and absorb what we can. But fundamentally, I think these higher baseline prices are here to stay. And since we pay quality premiums on top of that baseline, our costs naturally rise with it.
What this means at your end
We know price increases are frustrating, especially when you're already budgeting carefully. We hope this conversation makes sense of why your Brazilian coffees will cost more this year, and why we believe those higher prices actually represent something worth being optimistic about.
For the first time in decades, the baseline commodity price for coffee has lifted to a level where even producers without specialty market access are getting prices that actually cover their costs. For the producers we work with directly (who we've always paid sustainable premiums to), these higher baselines mean they're doing even better. They're putting those earnings into improved worker housing, community support, and sustainability work.
Brazilian producers working with us are using record earnings to make real improvements on the ground. Producers in Central America we've supported with fixed pricing for years are seeing the wider market finally catch up to what they deserve.
These aren't just numbers ticking up on a commodity exchange. They're real changes in real people's lives.
We're committed to sourcing exceptional coffee while making sure the people who grow it are treated fairly. We've always paid well above commodity prices, which is exactly why we're being transparent about pricing now, even when the news isn't what anyone wants to hear.
As our new Brazilians land in Aotearoa from February (just in time for late-summer iced coffee, if you're so inclined), we'll keep sharing what we're tasting and why we're excited about them. If you've got questions about specific coffees, our pricing, or anything else, give us a shout. We're always up for these conversations.
— Team Ozone
Want to dig further into how we source coffee and work with producers? Have a wander through our Journal for origin stories, producer profiles, and a look behind the scenes of the specialty coffee supply chain.