Market notes from the 2025/26 crop

Space out of Mombasa for December and January loading is already being taken. Our forwarders are quoting USD 2,600–3,100 per 20' dry container to Novorossiysk and USD 3,200–3,900 to St Petersburg — around 12% above where the same slots booked in March, with the Red Sea security surcharge still attached.

Transit itself is holding: 25–32 days to Novorossiysk, 35–45 days to St Petersburg. The variance sits in the transhipment. A missed connection at Jebel Ali or Salalah adds 4–7 days and there is no way to buy that risk down after the fact, so we are booking 3–4 weeks ahead of the vessel instead of the usual two.

Practical deadline: a new-crop lot contracted by mid-October ships in December and clears at destination in February. Contract later and you are buying whatever is left in the warehouse in March. We put the vessel and the ETA on the confirmation, not just the shipping month, so the date you plan production around is one you can hold us to.

The Nairobi Coffee Exchange ran the last sale of the 2025/26 season on Tuesday with about 8,400 bags on offer, against the 14,000–18,000 bags that were changing hands in February. Thin end-of-season catalogues usually mean firm prices, and that is what happened: Nyeri and Kirinyaga AA cleared at USD 385–455 per 50 kg bag, AB out of the same wet mills at USD 305–360.

Across the season AA averaged roughly 9% above 2024/25 and AB about 6%. The spread between the two grades widened rather than narrowed, which tells you what the competition was for: screen size for single-origin menus, not cup score.

Our read for the coming months is that AB from a mill whose AA you already like is the best value on the board — same picking day, same fermentation, same drying tables, 1–2 points off the cup and a third off the price. Where the profile matters more than the bean size, we would rather put you into AB and spend the difference on freight and rest time.

Pickers moved into the lower Embu and Murang'a blocks in the last week of May, about ten days later than usual after a cool, wet April. The fly crop is small by design — we expect 1,900–2,400 bags of washed coffee against roughly 11,000 from the same societies in the main crop — but until January it is the only fresh Kenyan arrival.

On the table it does what fly crop does: clean, bright, a shorter finish, 83.5–85.0 points on most lots. We buy it as a blend component and as cover for espresso programmes rather than as a single origin. If your Kenya slot is empty until new crop lands, this is what fills it.

Volumes are allocated in order of confirmation and we are not splitting these lots below 300 kg. Samples ship the week a lot finishes drying.

We have cupped 240 main-crop lots since January, ours and other people's. The season average sits at 85.4 points with the best Nyeri AA lots at 87.5; the same table averaged 84.8 last season. The lift is mostly in acidity and sweetness, which is what late, cool ripening tends to give you.

Profile: blackcurrant and dried plum from Nyeri and Kirinyaga, more tomato leaf and grapefruit out of Murang'a, a heavier cocoa-leaning body from the Bungoma and Elgon side. Moisture at shipment is running 10.2–11.0% with water activity 0.53–0.58, so the coffee is stable but not dried down hard — expect it to open up rather than fade.

Roasting note: these lots are dense and they are not ready on arrival. Give them 30–45 days off the boat before you profile, and re-cup rather than reusing last year's curve. The acidity structure is different enough to hear on a light-medium roast.

Yesterday's sale carried 16,200 bags, one of the larger catalogues of the season, and still cleared almost completely. AA from the Central Kenya mills went at USD 400–470 per 50 kg bag, AB from the same lots at USD 300–350, and PB traded at a 5–8% discount to AB.

Two things are driving it. Global arabica remains historically expensive, so buyers working on differentials are less price-sensitive than usual. And the main crop we called at 50,000–53,000 t in December has come in near the bottom of that range, at about 50,800 t clean.

For anyone still uncovered on Kenya this year: the market is unlikely to get cheaper before the fly crop, and the fly crop will not cover a serious programme. Cover the volume you know you need now and leave the speculative tonnage alone.

The short rains reached Nyeri and Kirinyaga two to three weeks behind schedule, so flowering and ripening both slipped. Peak main-crop picking now runs from mid-November to the end of December instead of finishing in November, and the wet mills are working 14–16-hour days to keep every delivery pulped within 8 hours.

Volumes look reasonable rather than large. We put the national clean-coffee crop at 50,000–53,000 t against 48,000 t last season, with cherry density and bean size both good in the 1,650–1,900 m blocks. The rain came late but it came steadily, which is the version we want.

Shipping consequence: milling and grading run through January, so the first new-crop containers leave Mombasa from mid-January and land in Novorossiysk in February. If you want new crop in the first quarter, contract in December and let the lot mill against your name.