Good morning and happy Monday to you

After a rainy weekend, it’s an absolutely beautiful spring morning here in the Northeast.  More rain is expected throughout the week, but temperatures have started to come up, buds on the trees have come out, and we have a general shade of greening everywhere you look.  Spring has sprung here.

More of the same on the terminal markets.  Range defined 88 to 95 in July and we wait to see which way we can break out, but for now range bound and down.  Its hard to say much more than we’ve already said recently.  Funds are very short and without anything to test their staying power, its going to be hard to mount very much of a rally.

In the news, world coffee exports were down 3.8% from the 11.42 million bags in March 2018 to 10.98 bags in March 2019.  Shipments of arabica in general was up 2% (Col was up 14% and Brazil Naturals up 9.7) while other milds were down 11.4% and Robusta was down 12.1%.  Exports in the first 6 months of the coffee year were up 4.1% to 63.15 million bags.

We’re starting to receive the first shipments of Central Specialties with Tarrazu and Antigua fresh in the warehouse.  We have an exceptional lot of Ethiopian Sidamo 3 just in the warehouse.  These are shipped to us from Dumerso in Ethiopia.  Did you see our friends there had a visit recently from none other than Ivanka Trump, who was there to showcase women in business in Africa.  Our friends, in addition to being great suppliers, own a coffee shop in Addis.  “Fundamentally, we believe that investing in women is a smart development policy and it is a smart business,” Ivanka Trump said after sampling coffee at a traditional Ethiopian ceremony.  “It’s also in our security interest, because women, when we’re empowered, foster peace and stability” (quoted from a VOA story we read last week).  Well said Ivanka, we couldn’t agree with you more.

We’re also proud of some new arrivals of micro lot Brazils, Colombia Café Lumbus, FTO and conventional Honduras SHG Genuine Marcala, some very nice FTO and conventional SHG Nicaragua as well, as our mainstays, Papua New Guinea Sigri A, B and some PB’s that should be arriving very soon.  We’ve also bought some Kenya and will have a few lots to show you very soon, they should be shipping very soon.

If we can help in any way, including sending you samples of some of these very fine coffees, you just need to let one of our traders know and we’d be happy to help in any way we can.

All the best

The Armenia Team