Capal Cooperative begins exporting coffee to the European community

Capal Cooperativa Agroindustrial began exporting coffee to the European community in January this year. Of the 72 containers sold, until the end of February, 20% were destined for the countries of Germany, France and part of the Netherlands. Each container contains 340 bags each.

The export of the raw material, also known as green coffee, a term in English used by international buyers, goes through a process of grain segregation and is then sent to industries abroad. In a few weeks, the cooperative will be ready to serve Canada and the United States.

The leap in marketing to other countries took place after a long journey of studies and investments that began in 2004, when several reasons led the cooperative to prepare to enter the domestic market, more specifically in the states of Paraná and São Paulo.

One of these reasons was the movements of the associated producers themselves who, over time, began to request that Capal participate in marketing, just as it does with other cereals (soy, corn, wheat and barley).

Challenges

The coordinator of the Coffee Business area, Newton Openheimer Beraldo, remembers that internal marketing went through several attempts due to the complexity of coffee and because it is a different reality from other cereals.

“Coffee is a commodity listed on the stock exchange where we have many variations in quality and this brings more complexity to the operation. However, the request from the members was included in Capal's Strategic Planning from 2018 to 2022 and, through this request from the members, this generated a demand for the Executive Board to have this coffee commercialization structured by the end of 2022”, he recalled.

The goal set out in the planning made the cooperative acquire, in 2019, a coffee unit that was already operating, in the city of Pinhalão (PR), where a company was already carrying out such activity, but a little different from what Capal practices today. .

Increased commercialization

Since then, domestic sales have increased from 70 thousand bags in 2020 to 120 thousand bags in 2021. The number for 2022 was the same due to market behavior and weather conditions.

In 2023 there was a jump and Capal closed the year with the sale of 580 thousand bags, covering 80% of sales in São Paulo and another 20% were destined for Paraná. For 2024, the goal is to increase sales to 700 thousand bags.

Capal Model

Today, Capal buys from its members the bica race (green coffee fruits, ripe cherry fruits and overripe fruits that have already dried on the plant) which offers coffee standards for the market and which meets the demands of both the domestic and foreign markets.

“Through this spout acquisition process, we segregate, standardize all of this and offer it to the market. This gives us the capacity to increase volume, because we achieved it through our commitment to keeping the operation fully covered without any type of positioning in relation to the market”, he explains.

The sale of this standard brings more liquidity to the operation and made Capal start strong in the domestic market, serving exporters with ready-made standards. “They only took the coffee purchased from us and took it ready-made to the foreign market. The learning we had with the domestic market brought us a certain curiosity about the foreign market, knowing that we were being the 'lungs' of many exporters here, so we decided to access the foreign market with more weight this year with the aim of more refined standards” , he said.

Increase in export

In 2023, the cooperative made a prototype to learn a little more about the paths to the external market. “Already knowing our capabilities, we move forward.” One of Capal's objectives for this year is to resume exports to the Asian market, work that began last year with Taiwan.

“Believing in the potential of the market there, we are preparing to serve Asia as a whole, we know that there is a series of specific licenses and documentation. This takes some time. We have already started this process and I believe that, by the middle of the year, we will be able to export to these countries”, he guaranteed.

Benefits for the producer

For the coordinator, the better the condition of the prices accessed, the better the transfer to the producer. With this in mind, over the last five years, Capal has been mapping the quality of coffee produced by cooperative members, which, according to Newton, is becoming more and more popular.

“We carry out quality development work and, this year, we intend to increase it even further by training our technical team to extract the best possible quality and, in this way, access to the market will be increasingly interesting. Our role in the development of technology, both productivity and quality produced, is becoming increasingly stronger because there is a link between these actions”.

Investments

With the aim of expanding the capacity to receive coffee production from the state of São Paulo, Capal acquired three storage companies in the municipality of Piraju (SP). The three organizations, Piraju Armazéns Ltda, Pro Advanced Ltda and IBL Indústria Luso do Brasil Ltda, together have a 2,4 m² warehouse, with a storage capacity of 55 bags of coffee, in addition to a feed factory and offices.

Negotiations began at the end of 2022 and, in November 2023, the cooperative definitively took over the facilities. The structure is almost four times larger compared to the Pinhalão (PR) unit and has storage capacity for 15 thousand bags of coffee. With the new acquisition, the Cooperative now has 21 units.