A Year That Reshaped Coffee: 2025 Reflections from OCAFI’s Sylwia Padiasek
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Introduction from the Coffee Fest Education Team
2025 delivered a level of volatility the coffee industry hadn’t seen in years - tariffs, climate impacts, soaring input costs, and major disruptions across the global supply chain.
As part of our commitment to bringing timely, practical insight to our Coffee Fest community, we invited Sylwia Padiasek - co-founder of OCAFI and a featured speaker at Coffee Fest events - to share her reflections on the year that was.
Sylwia’s perspective bridges the entire chain, from farm-level production in Brazil to import and roasting operations in North America and Europe. Her piece offers both a grounded summary of what happened and a forward-looking view of how we can adapt.
Lani Kingston
Education & Conference Director, Coffee Fest
2025 will be remembered as the year the global coffee industry admitted how fragile it really is.
Prices, politics, weather, logistics - everything stretched our minds, our calendars, and most definitely, our wallets. For more than a decade, we thought we understood rollercoaster coffee cycles. Then 2025 arrived and rewrote the whole script.
Arabica futures crossed levels most of us had never seen, briefly rising above $4.40/lb. Robusta followed with historic highs of its own. Whatever stability 2024 offered evaporated overnight. If you raised your prices in April 2024 thinking you were safe, 2025 had other plans. Every input cost moved: green coffee, packaging, freight, labor, cups. Predictability left the chat, especially on the Americas side of the Atlantic.
Agronomy didn’t offer a break either. Brazil entered 2025 still carrying the weight of one of the worst early-season droughts in decades, reducing flowering and cherry formation. Screen sizes fell, density dropped, and yields tightened. Vietnam, the backbone of Robusta, suffered a couple punches as well: dry-season losses followed by harvest-time floods and landslides. Bottomline, not enough coffee for global demand.
And then came the tariffs. A 10 % U.S. duty on most green coffee took effect in early April 2025 (following what was called “Liberation Day” on April 2, 2025). In July, the U.S. administration imposed additional tariffs specifically on Brazilian imports, including coffee - a 40 % duty on Brazilian coffee on top of the 10% baseline. Landed costs increased materially and with little warning. Many roasters had to delay purchases, renegotiate contracts, or pivot origins entirely. By late November, tariffs were finally removed and green coffee returned to 0%, but the aftershocks remain. Shipping delays, expensive contracts fixed in the chaos (likely and hopefully not too many), lack of SPOT coffees domestically, disrupted supply chains, rerouted containers, defaulted contracts, depleted wallets, high retail prices.
Europe wasn’t spared from regulation drama either. The EU spent the year wrestling with the EUDR, and in December negotiators finally agreed to a one-year delay - twice as long as originally proposed. Requirements were softened, and policymakers openly acknowledged that the original timeline and bureaucratic load were unrealistic for traders, operators, and authorities. The provisional deal still needs final approval, but the message is clear: the industry needs more time to adapt. And now it has it.
So what worked in 2025? What helped businesses survive a year of chaos - and what can we carry forward? While vertical integration helped OCAFI adapt quickly, 2025 also underscored some universal truths that apply across the coffee industry - no matter your size or position in the supply chain.
The roasters and partners who navigated this year most successfully - whether large or small - shared a few key traits: they stayed in close communication with suppliers, remained flexible in their contracting and inventory strategies, and diversified their sourcing to reduce risk. These aren’t just crisis strategies; they’re long-term habits that build resilience.
For producers and exporters, working with multiple buyers across different markets offered protection against sudden trade shifts. For roasters, even modest diversification in origin and contract type helped buffer against volatility. And across the board, transparency - real, ongoing visibility into what’s happening at each stage - proved essential.
At OCAFI, we faced our share of challenges - but we navigated them with the support of our team, our farm partners, and the trust of our clients. For us, 2025 validated the power of vertical integration. Because OCAFI owns farms and manages the entire chain - growing, processing, exporting, importing, storage, logistics - we could adapt faster and communicate clearly in a year where information changed daily. Our teams in Brazil, the U.S., and Europe stayed aligned through every curveball.
I believe the companies that navigated 2025 best were like our clients - true partners: flexible, proactive, and collaborative. Together, we rolled contracts, adjusted timing, refined fixations, and made smart decisions in an increasingly volatile landscape.
2025 was challenging, but it also showed what works: flexible contracting and diversification across the supply chain, airtight communication, and supply-chain ownership. The industry is shifting toward tighter supply, higher production costs, and more complex regulations. But it’s also shifting toward better transparency, better data, and stronger partnerships.
We’re grateful to the roasters who trusted us through this year’s chaos. We’re proud of our teams on every continent. And we’re ready for 2026 - hopefully with fewer surprises, but we’re prepared either way.
Here’s to the new year, and to building a coffee supply chain that can handle whatever comes next.
Smacznej kawusi (enjoy your coffee),
Sylwia Padiasek
Explore more insights from Sylwia and see where she’s speaking next by visiting her Coffee Fest speaker profile.
VIEW SYLWIA'S PROFILE AND UPCOMING SESSIONS HERE
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