What specialty green actually costs.
Ethiopian specialty green trades at roughly $6 to $13 per kilo FOB depending on grade, region, process and season, with the 2025/26 average near $7.50. Not the $20 to $40 that circulates online.
This is a correction worth filing publicly, because inflated numbers circulate and they waste everybody's time.
Quality Ethiopian specialty green trades at roughly six to thirteen dollars per kilo FOB, depending on grade, region, process and season. In the 2025/26 season the national average sat near seven dollars fifty a kilo.
Where the inflated numbers come from
Figures of twenty to forty dollars a kilo describe competition auction lots, tiny volumes, and the retail romance built on top of them. They are real prices for real coffees, but they describe a shop window rather than the working trade. Quoting them as though they were the market makes a roaster think they cannot afford Ethiopia, or makes them assume anything cheaper must be inferior.
What actually moves the price
Grade and cup score, first. Region, because names like Yirgacheffe and Guji carry a premium that is partly reputation. Process, since well executed naturals often price above washed from the same area. Volume and timing, because spot coffee already landed in a warehouse costs more than a forward contract on coffee still at origin. And the season itself, which in a record year like this one has been firm.
Why publishing it helps us
Honest numbers are not less impressive than inflated ones. They are what let a roaster plan a menu, an importer plan a container and an exporter plan a season. A buyer who has been told twenty dollars and then quoted eight has learned that someone was guessing. We would rather be the ones who put the range in writing.
What that price does not include is the journey. FOB Djibouti carries about 900 kilometres of road behind it, which we cover in the road to Djibouti.