Coffee
Excluding water, coffee is the most heavily consumed beverage in the world, with over 400 billion cups consumed every year worldwide. It is a brewed drink prepared from roasted coffee beans, which are the seeds, or berries of the Coffea plant.
The two most common types of coffee beans are the highly regarded Coffea Arabica, and the Robusta form of the more durable Coffea Canephora. Arabica coffee has a nicer taste and aroma, and a lower caffeine content, and Robusta coffee has a more bitter taste, a caffeine content around twice as high as Arabica, and is resistant to coffee leaf rust, along with other pesticides.
Once ripe, coffee berries are picked, processed and dried. Dried coffee beans are roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavour, and the roasted beans are ground and brewed with boiling water to produce coffee as a beverage.
The Arabica plants can only be grown in particular places, near the equator and at a high altitude, whereas Robusta can be grown in much more testing conditions.
Coffee plants are cultivated in more than 70 countries worldwide, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa, and nearly 25 million farmers worldwide depend on coffee crops for their economic livelihood. Coffee is the top agricultural export for numerous countries, and it is one of the most valuable commodities exported by developing countries.
At AP Commodities, we look for ways to market and source coffees according to our customers’ needs. We are involved in most coffees which come from the America’s, West and East Africa as well Asia.