Nestle buys farmers at low prices

It coincides with the new round of coffee purchasing season in Yunnan. In Pu'er, the main producing area, the coffee farmers at the Manxi Tea Farm Coffee Commune are worried at the fresh fruit of the dried coffee in the field.

Not long ago, the international coffee giant Nestl é offered an initial purchase price of 17.9 yuan / kg for Arabica coffee beans in the new season, the lowest price for Nestl é in nearly five years, and the price has been broken again recently.

"the latest offer we got from Nestl é is 17.16 yuan / kg." "but because Nestle's offer is low, the farmers in the cooperative who are unwilling to sell beans at a low price have watched the fresh coffee fruits in the fields slowly dry up," the head of the Pu'er Manxi Coffee Cooperative told the Daily Economic News. "

As the purchase price continues to approach the cost price of 15 yuan to 16 yuan per kilogram, farmers began to find ways to save themselves.

Yesterday, the Daily Economic News reporter learned exclusively from Zhang Shineng, founder of Yunnan Coffee Network, that in view of the current difficulties facing Yunnan coffee, it has joined forces with a number of small and medium-sized coffee companies, farmers and merchants to set up mutual aid cooperatives for Yunnan coffee industry (hereinafter referred to as mutual aid cooperatives) and "strive to establish a relatively fair Yunnan coffee auction system."

Industrial chain enterprises work together to save themselves.

Zhang Shineng showed the reporter a list of advocates of mutual aid cooperatives. in this list, there are not only local coffee enterprises, small and medium-sized farmers in Yunnan, but also coffee shops and venture capital institutions at the end of the industrial chain, which basically covers the entire industrial chain of the coffee industry.

The emergence of this list is not random, Zhang Shineng admitted that we wanted to do so when Nestl é suspended its acquisition at the beginning of the year. Recently, Nestl é's purchase price hit a new low in the new quarter, prompting them to push out the cooperative.

The Pu'er Manxi Tea Farm Coffee Cooperative is a local cooperative set up by farmers. At this time in the past, farmers in the cooperative had begun to harvest fresh coffee fruit and shipped the coffee beans to Nestle for purchase after rough processing. But Nestl é's falling purchase price puts them in a dilemma.

"it is the purchasing season for fresh coffee fruit, and it should be harvested and processed and sold to Nestle at this time." The person in charge of the Pu'er Manxi Tea Farm Coffee Cooperative said frankly, "to be honest, the coffee beans in our cooperative are of poor quality, but the coffee beans with relatively good quality, although Nestl é is purchasing coffee beans, the purchase price will fluctuate to a certain extent, but this price still does not reflect the value of our high-quality coffee beans."

Zhang Shineng also said that at present, Ka farmers have many high-quality Yunnan small coffee beans, but these coffee beans can only be sold to large coffee companies such as Nestle.

How to improve Yunnan's high-quality small-grain coffee and give Yunnan coffee a higher status, mutual aid cooperatives emerge as the times require, and will strive to cooperate with cafes and other terminals to establish a relatively fair Yunnan coffee auction system, so that high-quality coffee beans can achieve value maximization.

The head of the coffee cooperative in Pu'er Manxi Tea Farm revealed that at present, 40% of the coffee grown and picked by himself "will not be purchased by Nestl é", but will realize value through the above platform. There are not a few farmers who have the same idea.

In view of the above situation, some industry insiders pointed out that at present, the price of coffee beans purchased by Nestl é in Yunnan fluctuates on the basis of international coffee futures prices, and there is no situation in which Nestle "big stores deceive customers", and it is relatively fair.

But even so, the ever-bottoming purchase price of Nestle coffee has forced farmers to make these choices. This may affect Nestl é's purchase of coffee beans in Yunnan this season. Will the "suspension of supply" incident of Hougu Coffee a few years ago be repeated this year? It's worth watching.

Or copy the "back Valley Gate" event.

Because the purchasing cost of Nestl é coffee beans is falling and there is no room for profit, a similar scene occurred between Nestl é and local coffee companies in Yunnan a few years ago.

At that time, it was Hougu Coffee, China's largest instant coffee producer, that stopped supplying coffee beans to Nestl é.

In 2008, Hougu Coffee, Nestl é's largest coffee supplier in Asia, announced without warning that it would no longer supply Nestl é with coffee ingredients.

Hougu Coffee said in a statement at that time, "in order to meet the needs of Hougu Coffee's own development strategy, Hougu Coffee will bid farewell to the era of raw material suppliers and strive to build Hougu Coffee product brands." strive for Hougu Coffee, a 'Chinese-made national brand, to go to the world, and strive to keep pace with international well-known brands such as Nestle as soon as possible. "

People involved in the incident told reporters that another main reason why Hougu Coffee chose to cut off its supply to Nestle was that the purchase price for the better quality coffee bean Nestle was too low.

As for the emergence of mutual aid cooperatives and whether there will be an impact on the future purchase of coffee beans, as of press time, the reporter could not contact the relevant person in charge of Nestl é China.

The cooperative model is controversial.

According to Zhang Shineng, with industrial mutual aid cooperatives as the carrier and opening up various financing channels, mutual aid cooperatives will set up a Yunnan coffee industry development fund in 2013 to support the development of cooperative members.

The fund initially plans to raise 100 million yuan, including venture capital and banks, and then will look for suitable agents throughout the country.

It is possible to raise an industrial fund of 100 million yuan, focusing on the support of small and medium-sized farmers and terminal sales channels, and the mutual cooperative model looks beautiful so far.

However, some senior people in Yunnan Coffee think that this model is somewhat unstable. "I think their starting point is very good. They want to expand the influence of Yunnan's small-grain coffee in China, but the loose combination of interests of cooperatives may not be able to balance the mode of operation, whether it will be recognized by terminal merchants is still unknown."