Trade glossary

47 terms used across green coffee trading, roasting, packaging and export compliance — defined plainly, with the Brazilian trade terms included.

Channel

HORECA HORECA: Hotels, restaurants and cafés — the away-from-home foodservice channel, as distinct from retail grocery.

Compliance

EU FIC FIC (União Europeia): EU Regulation 1169/2011 on Food Information to Consumers. It governs what must appear on a retail food label sold in the EU, including a named EU-based food business operator responsible for the label.
EUDR EUDR: The EU Deforestation Regulation. It requires operators placing coffee on the EU market to prove, with plot-level geolocation data, that it was not grown on land deforested after 31 December 2020, and to file a due diligence statement.
FSVP FSVP: Foreign Supplier Verification Program. A US FDA requirement that the US importer — not the exporter — verify that a foreign supplier produces food to US safety standards, and name a qualified individual responsible for the programme.
ICO certificate of origin Certificado de origem ICO: A document issued under the International Coffee Organization system identifying the origin, quality and quantity of an exported coffee shipment. Most importing markets expect one with the shipping documents.
Prior Notice Prior Notice: An advance electronic filing to the US FDA for every imported food shipment, submitted before the goods arrive. Missing it holds the container at the port.
Traceability Rastreabilidade: The ability to identify where a specific lot of coffee was grown and every step it passed through. Depth matters: traceability to a country is not traceability to a cooperative, and neither is traceability to a farm.

Incoterms

FOB FOB: Free On Board. The seller delivers the coffee loaded on the vessel at the named port of shipment, and risk transfers there. 'FOB Santos' is the most common basis for Brazilian green coffee.
Incoterms Incoterms: The International Chamber of Commerce's standard trade terms — FOB, CFR, CIF, DDP and others — that define where risk and cost transfer from seller to buyer. Every green coffee contract names one.

Logistics

FCL (full container load) FCL (contêiner completo): A shipment that fills one container and is not consolidated with other cargo. A 20' FCL of green coffee in 60 kg bags is conventionally 275 bags, or 16.5 metric tons.
LTL (less than truckload) LTL (carga fracionada): Domestic freight for shipments too large for parcel but smaller than a full truck. Pallets of green coffee in the small-lot tier normally move LTL.
Parcel Encomenda (parcel): Small-package carrier shipping, used for boxed green coffee and sample orders. Practical up to roughly the weight one person can lift.

Packaging

Degassing Desgaseificação: The release of carbon dioxide from coffee after roasting. It is most intense in the first few days and is why sealed roasted coffee needs a one-way valve: without one the bag inflates or bursts.

Payment

Letter of credit (LC) Carta de crédito (LC): A bank undertaking to pay the seller once specified shipping documents are presented. It substitutes the bank's credit for the buyer's and is common on container-scale trades between parties without a track record.

Pricing

Basis Base (basis): The reference against which a physical coffee is priced — normally a named futures contract month plus or minus a differential. Quoting a basis rather than a flat price lets both sides fix the futures leg independently of the physical trade.
Differential Diferencial: The premium or discount applied to the futures contract to arrive at the physical price, expressed as 'over' or 'under' a named contract month. It reflects origin, quality, preparation, certification and the cost of getting the coffee to the delivery point.
ICE Robusta contract Contrato Robusta da ICE: The London-traded futures contract for Robusta coffee, quoted in US dollars per metric ton. It is the price reference for Robusta worldwide, and it is a different contract from the New York 'C', which prices Arabica in US cents per pound.

Private label

Co-packing Terceirização de envase (co-packing): Manufacturing and packing a product under someone else's brand. In coffee it usually covers roasting, grinding, packing, date coding and case packing, with the brand owner supplying artwork and specifications.
MOQ MOQ (pedido mínimo): Minimum order quantity. In private label coffee the binding minimum is often set by printed film rather than by roasting: film is printed in long runs, so the packaging supplier's minimum sets the floor.
Private label Marca própria: Product manufactured by one company and sold under another company's brand. In coffee the brand owner controls recipe, artwork and pricing; the roaster controls production.
White label White label: A product made to a producer's own standard specification and sold under many different brands. Private label, by contrast, is built to a specific brand's specification. The terms are often used interchangeably in coffee.

Processing

Beneficiamento (dry milling) Beneficiamento: The Brazilian term for dry milling: hulling the dried cherry or parchment, then cleaning, screening and separating the green coffee by size and density until it meets an export specification.
Cherry Cereja: The fruit of the coffee plant. Each cherry normally contains two seeds, which become the green coffee beans after processing.

Product

Green coffee Café verde: Unroasted coffee seed, cleaned and milled to an export specification. It is a durable agricultural commodity: stored correctly it holds quality for a year or more, which is why almost all coffee crosses borders green.

Quality

Cup score Nota de xícara: A sensory score assigned by trained graders on a 100-point scale. Robusta is scored under the CQI Fine Robusta protocol, which is a different scale from the SCA Arabica protocol and is not directly comparable to it.
Defect count Contagem de defeitos: The number of defective beans and foreign objects found in a fixed sample, usually 300 g. Different standards weight defects differently, so a defect count is only meaningful alongside the standard it was counted under.
Outturn sample Amostra de outturn: A sample drawn from the coffee after it arrives at destination, used to confirm the delivered lot matches what was contracted. Claims, allowances and rejections are settled against it.
PSS (pre-shipment sample) PSS (amostra pré-embarque): A sample drawn from the actual lot before it ships, sent for buyer approval. Approving the PSS is normally the last step before the coffee is loaded.
Screen size Peneira: Bean size measured in 64ths of an inch by passing the coffee over perforated screens. Larger, more uniform screens roast more evenly, which is why buyers specify a screen distribution rather than an average.
SS (shipment sample) SS (amostra de embarque): A sample drawn from the coffee as it is loaded, sent alongside the shipment as the record of what actually left origin. It is compared with the pre-shipment sample and the outturn.
Water activity Atividade de água: A measure of unbound water available in the bean, on a scale from 0 to 1. It predicts storage stability and mould risk better than moisture percentage alone, so serious green buyers ask for both.

Roasting

Agtron score Escala Agtron: A numerical measure of roast colour read by a near-infrared spectrophotometer. Lower numbers mean darker roasts. Agtron is the standard way to specify a roast level in a co-packing contract because it is objective and repeatable, unlike words such as 'medium'.
Crema Crema: The emulsified foam that sits on top of an espresso. Robusta produces noticeably more crema than Arabica and it persists longer, which is why traditional Italian espresso blends include it.
Roast yield Rendimento de torra: The weight of roasted coffee obtained from a given weight of green, after moisture and organic matter are driven off. Typical loss is 16 to 18%, so one kilo of green yields roughly 830 grams roasted. Roasted pricing has to carry this loss.
Torra (roast) Torra: The Brazilian term for roast, used both for the process and for the roast level. Brazilian domestic convention describes roast levels differently from the North American scale, so contracts specify Agtron rather than a word.
Torrefação (roasting operation) Torrefação: The Brazilian term for a roasting operation or roasting company. 'Torrefação terceirizada' is contract roasting — roasting done for another brand.

Species

Arabica Arábica: Coffea arabica, the other commercially dominant coffee species. Compared with Robusta it has higher acidity, lighter body, roughly half the caffeine and less crema. It is priced against the New York 'C' contract, not the London Robusta contract.
Coffea canephora Coffea canephora: The botanical species sold internationally as Robusta and known in Brazil as Conilon. Conilon and Robusta are not two coffees — they are two names for the same species.
Conilon Conilon: The Brazilian regional name for Robusta coffee, Coffea canephora. Brazilian buyers say Conilon; international buyers say Robusta. The coffee is the same.
Robusta Robusta: The international trade name for Coffea canephora, known in Brazil as Conilon. It carries more body, lower acidity, roughly twice the caffeine of Arabica and produces more crema, which makes it the backbone of Italian espresso blends and the instant category.

Trading

Afloat Embarcado (afloat): Coffee that has been loaded onto a vessel and is in transit to the destination port but has not yet cleared customs. Afloat coffee sits between forward and spot: the quantity and quality are fixed, the arrival date is estimated.
Allowance Abatimento (allowance): A price reduction agreed after arrival when the delivered coffee falls short of the contracted quality but the buyer chooses to accept it rather than reject the lot. Allowances are negotiated against the outturn sample.
Forward contract Contrato futuro (forward): A contract for coffee that has not yet been harvested or shipped, for delivery in a stated future window. Forward contracts let a buyer secure volume ahead of a crop and let the seller plan production.
Position Posição: The delivery window a coffee is sold for, named as a month or a range of months. 'May 2027 position' means the coffee becomes available for shipment in that window.
Spot Pronta entrega (spot): Coffee that has landed, cleared customs and is sitting in a destination warehouse, available for immediate release. Spot is the only position that can support checkout-style transactional buying.

Units

Saca Saca: The Brazilian coffee bag of 60 kg, the standard unit in which Brazilian production, inventory and exports are counted. 5,000 sacas is 300 metric tons.
Safra (harvest year) Safra: The Brazilian term for the crop year. Naming the safra matters commercially because coffee from an older crop trades at a discount to current-crop coffee.

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