Specialty Coffee Association CEO Yannis Apostolopoulos says the association is committed to making coffee better. He shares his thoughts with GCR on what to expect for the coffee industry in 2024.
2023 will remain a landmark year for the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) with the introduction of Coffee Value Assessment (CVA), which will help the industry by being a new paradigm for value discovery. This is the result of years of work and research, and incorporates the advancements in sensory science in an evolution of the SCA’s cupping form after 20 years. CVA will allow the industry and trade to capture a high resolution picture of coffees, and all the attributes intrinsic and extrinsic, that give higher value to every coffee in the marketplace.
For 2024, and the foreseeable future, we will continue to invest in CVA with a focus to provide education and access to information to everyone in the value chain. Moreover, as we are a trade association, we want to grow specialty coffee market and we believe this can be accomplished by reaching out to consumers. SCA will make a significant investment to actually grow the market through consumer activation.
Coffee industry challenges are very real, and even if we as an industry and as SCA are committed to make coffee better, it is a marathon and not a sprint. Coffee sustainability will remain on the forefront of discussions. We will be focusing in value distribution, so as to have meaningful conversations about risk and reward across the value chain. Regulatory changes we’ve seen in 2023 will continue to have significant impact in trade.
Finally, I believe industry and regulators need to create a clear framework and discuss consumer labelling about the so-called coffee beverages not using coffee beans.
This article was first published in the January/February 2024 edition of Global Coffee Report. Read more HERE.
