One indirect effect of the shortages after the 2021 frost in Brasil is random hiccups in the supply of some of our most popular origins of coffee beans. Even Kenya the queen of mild roast coffees vanished recently for a couple of months on the wholesale market. Other worries are on Cuban (promised for March but don’t hold your breath), Our favorite Brasil Santos (promised for late March) and our new star organic Fairtrade Congo (plenty at the moment but supply looks sporadic looking forward). Why do we sell Kenyan and Cuban (and other coffees) which are not organic Fairtrade? Simple answer the ..read more

It’s been a turbulent time at Coffee Plant with staff illness and family issues getting in the way of customer service over the vital Christmas period. If you had to wait in a slow moving queue we apologise. The unfortunate fact is that anyone living in London are on relatively low wages sometimes has to make difficult decisions which can inconvenience the people around them. But now for the good news. We have the best team in place that we have had for a long time. They are not only efficient, they have already benefitted from what our long standing customers recognise as the Spirit of Coffe ..read more

Fortunately, this is something we rarely hear but we suspect that independent shops following the current trend for super light roast hear it more often. As well as gourmet suppliers with light acidic coffees, there are other reasons a cup of coffee can be a disappointment. Chains offer high roast coffee made weakly, or low-grade Robusta, to boost profits probably attract this sentiment – if anyone bothered to complain. Setting aside the greedy chains, the specialist coffee shops may not always be to blame if their customers are unhappy. The fact is that your mouth expects the same strength of ..read more

Frost is the enemy of coffee plants. With the Brazil frost season now over uneventfully, coffee roasters (and drinkers) are breathing a sigh of relief, hoping for a drop in the sky-high wholesale prices we have suffered since the frost in Brazil last summer. So far that has not happened and in the next few weeks Coffee may even be raising prices to match the current levels. Speculators from the financial sector jumped in after the 2021 frost anticipating shortages and that alone pushed prices even higher. In case you are wondering, the speculators never take ownership of the coffee they have c ..read more

This month is Plastic Free July! At Coffee Plant we are well aware that plastic waste is highly damaging to the environment. Plastic micro and nano particles could turn out to be literally slow poisons. As a customer you would probably like to know what we are doing about this. The problem is that by now we are all used to plastic laminated hot cups. Retail coffee bags are also made of laminated plastic even when they do look like paper. Plastic valves are built in, making the empty bag even more difficult to recycle and these valves are essential to maintain freshness over a longer period. We ..read more

A new study involving real-world experiments at 30 coffee farms has found that coffee fruit health and production is dramatically improved with the increased presence of both birds and bees. The research underscores the need to support agroforestry systems in coffee farming — as opposed to deforested monocrop systems — in order to support biodiversity, plant health, and potentially producer incomes. Led by researchers from the Costa Rica-based international agricultural research agency CATIE and from the University of Vermont, the study showed that coffee plants produced the hea ..read more

McDonald’s received £872 million in UK Covid-19 subsidies and tax breaks in 2020 War in Want is a charity not afraid to attack the structures that give rise to the unfair world we live in. It’s not only the £872m. A new WoW video explains how in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, McDonald’s was using a circular paper transaction to create a London tax shelter, that will deprive UK public funds of £295 million in tax over ten years. War on Want say: “We must raise the pressure on corporate tax dodgers and demand that HMRC investigates McDonald’s. Watch it now WATCH & share on twitte ..read more

We have experienced strong growth across most of our certification schemes across Forestry and Organic; moved into our new headquarters in central Bristol and seen our team grow by over 40 staff; helped the organic market increase in size to £3bn; expand our reach to now certify FSC and PEFC schemes in over 60 countries, representing certified forestry of over 27 million hectarage, an area larger than the UK; successfully launched a new organic business IT certification system and most recently moved into the carbon climate change area by offering new schemes covering woodland and peatland car ..read more

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Ian Henshall and all of the team from Coffee Plant, Our Factory will be closed from Friday 24th Until Tuesday 28th December. Wednesday 29th and Thursday 30th December we will be open from 8am until 2pm for emergency orders. Friday 31st December we will be closed Monday  3rd January we will be closed Tuesday 4th January we will be open as usual but please expect a day`s delay with orders due to the festive back log. Our shop based in Portobello Road will be open as normal throughout the festive period.     ..read more

Coffee wholesale prices have rocketed in the last few months and this will affect prices in the shops before much longer. Why have prices more than double? There are two reasons: the superficial and the fundamental an of course the media are focusing on the superficial cause which was a minor frost in Brasil last summer (their winter). In nature, coffee is a bush growing under big trees in tropical forests, so coffee monoculture as practiced in Brasil leaves the bushes vulnerable to frost. But is was not the Brasil frost which pushed the price up so spectacularly, the underlying cause was the ..read more