The total average price for all the 25 Columbian coffees that scored more than 87 points was $30.79 per pound, which is the new best record for the Cup of Excellence competition. The previous record that was set last year at the Ethiopia COE auction was $28.44 per pound.
But that's not the only record that was set on the 3rd June Cup of Excellence auction. The top-scoring coffee breed was sold for an astonishing price of $135.10 per pound, which is almost twice bigger than the previous auction record of $70 per pound. Price breaking lot was sold to buyer K.V.N. Import Export (1991) Co. Ltd, which is associated with a wholesale coffee supplier and retailer Aroma Group, based in Thailand. The total revenue of the event also was pretty solid - $540,000 for all the 25 best Columbian coffees.
The best (and the pricier!) coffee on auction was a washed Gesha variety produced by Pablo Andrés Guerrero Pérez’s on his farm “Obraje,” located in Buesaco, Nariño. His breed scored 90.61 points and was divided into two smaller lots for the purposes of the auction. However, K.V.N Import Export (1991) Co. Ltd just purchased both of them.
"Of course we did our best to make our coffee worth taking its part in the contest," said Pablo Andrés Guerrero Pérez in the interview to COE organizer the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE), "but we couldn't even imagine such a high price for our coffee".
The second-best coffee on the auction, which scored a solid 90+, was a washed Gesha made by Anibal Celestino Sanchez Burbano’s on the “La Siria” farm located in Huila. This coffee was also divided into two separate lots. One of them was purchased by two Chinese buyers while the second lot went to a consortium of United States buyers, including Cometeer, George Howell Coffee, Bird Rock Coffee Roasters, Intelligentsia Coffee and Passenger Coffee for the price of $95.10 per pound.
The 2022 Cup of Excellence competition will be launched in the third-fourth quarter of that year to make it easier to participate for producers from regions with later harvest dates.