Illycaffè: here's why the cost of a cup of coffee at the café could reach 2 euros

"We are still in the storm, the market continues to be characterised by a very volatile green coffee price and an unprecedented bullish trend. Today, green coffee costs 245 cents per pound, 66% more than last year, more than twice as much as three years ago. And this explains why in three years the cost of the cup of coffee we drink at the café has increased by 15%, and now costs an average of one and a half euros in Italy. And it is estimated that it will rise further, and could reach 2 euro in the coming months if these bullish pressures on the cost of green coffee, the raw material, continue'. This was said by Cristina Scocchia, head of Illycaffè, who spoke today at the Rimini Meeting during the conference 'The value of work: an urgent search'.

According to Scocchia, in fact, 'the reasons why green coffee continues to cost more and more are many and do not have an easy solution. The first is surely climate change, which could halve cultivated land by 2050. Just think of what has been happening in recent months: from torrential rains in Brazil to droughts in Vietnam. But in the short and medium term, the supply chain is also under pressure because of the Suez Canal problem, which has increased costs and lengthened the timeframe, and because of speculation affecting soft commodities more generally,' he points out.

'In the two-year period 2022/2023,' recalls Scocchia, 'illycaffè's production costs have increased by 17%, but we have only passed one third of this cost increase downstream to consumers (3% in January 2022 and 3% in January 2023 ). For the time being we do not intend to increase the price of our products to help our end customers, both B2B and B2C, but obviously we will have to revisit this decision if the upward trend continues,' he concludes.