Global coffee harvests and their arrival in the UK

As my coffee geekery has no bounds I have compiled these tables for my own use, so that I can remind myself when to expect particular coffees to be available here in the UK. Obviously people involved in coffee professionally probably know these things but I thought it may be of interest to a couple of other people. The inimitable Sweet Maria’s have a more complex table showing the full harvest period, the best harvest period, the full shipping period and the nest shipping period. I have used this alongside Mercanta’s loose reporting of when they expect particular countries’ harvests to arrive (cos Mercanta source a vast chunk of the [good] coffee that comes into the UK). I’m presuming things take quite a long time, so the periods listed here align with the ends of Sweet Maria’s periods. This sort of matches up with how the Cup of Excellence country programmes function too.

Country Harvest Arrival in UK
Brazil September October-April
Colombia November-December & May-June January-February & July-August
Costa Rica March April-July
Guatemala December-March April-July
Honduras February March-June
Nicaragua March April-July
El Salvador March May-August
Ethiopia November-February April-August
Kenya February April (possibly more in September from a ‘Fly Crop’)
Rwanda October December-January
Dominican Republic February-April (long season) April-August
Panama (for those who’re lucky!) March April-June

This table shows the most likely times for coffee to be arriving from the respective country.

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
Bolivia X X X
Brazil X X X X X X X
Colombia X X X X
Costa Rica X X X X
Dominican Republic X X
El Salvador X X X X
Ethiopia X X X X
Gautemala X X X X
Honduras X X
Kenya X X X X
Nicaragua X X X X
Panama X X X X X
Rwanda X X
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