Coffee Glossary - Atlas Coffee Importers

The Atlas Coffee Glossary

A quick reference guide to the endless alphabet soup and jargon of the trade.

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Coffee Glossary
Our Coffee Glossary takes the mystery out of our jargon-heavy industry-speak, and sheds light on some of the more Atlas-centric lingo.
Coffee Encyclopedia
Atlas staff bring their years of experience around the coffee world to bear on explaining a wide range of essential coffee topics from cultivation to consumption.

The Glossary

Next time you receive an offer for FTO SHB EP, FOT TGR, our handy dandy Glossary will help you unwind the acronyms and learn to spout jargon like a seasoned pro. Find out WTF DPF is, and you might want to join us.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Estimated To Arrive. For coffee, generally used in the context of expected arrival at the destination port. Availability in the warehouse will take an additional week or two from arrival depending on the schedule of the drayage company who moves the container from the port to the warhouse; the warehouse's availability to unload (or strip) the container; the time it takes to draw and approve arrival samples.

ETD

Excelso

F Fair Trade to Futures

A legally binding agreement to buy or sell a commodity sometime in the future. Futures contracts are standardized according to the quality, quantity, and delivery time and location for each commodity. The only variable is price, which is discovered during market hours by buyers and sellers. For Coffee Traders, futures are used to mitigate exposure to the ups and downs of the commodity market. If you want to know more about this, you should just call us because there is not a lot of room here and this could take awhile.

G GCA to Guayaba

H HG to HG

I ICO to Incoterms®

ICO

ICO stands for the International Coffee Organization (www.ico.org), which was established in 1963 by the United Nations, and is the main intergovernmental organization for coffee, "bringing together exporting and importing Governments to tackle the challenges facing the world coffee sector through international cooperation." Coffee bags are generally marked with ICO marks that designate the member country's ID number (ex. Brazil = 2), an exporter's number, and a unique lot ID, such as 2/4232/0023. These markings are helpful for identification throughout the supply chain.

Importer

Incoterms®

K Kaldi to Kiboko

Kaldi

Kiboko

L LLF to Lot

LLF

Logisitcs

London

Aside from the obvious fact that it is a city in the United Kingdom, it is also the vernacular for the Robusta Coffee Market since the physical trading market used to be located there, prior to becoming part of the ICE (link to ICE Glossary Post) electronic trading platform. When coffee people say, for example, "London really ate crap today," they mean that the commodity value of Robusta coffee dropped significantly. They do NOT mean that the entire city actually consumed offal.

Lot

A lot is really any unique and discreet batch of coffee. For the trade, one lot of coffee will usually refer to either a full shipping container's worth of coffee (typically around 42,500 lbs, or 275 x 69-kg bags, or 320 x 60kg bags), or a lot of coffee futures, which is 37,500 pounds. However, high-quality smaller lots (or micro-lots) are increasingly being kept separated by small-scale producers, and consolidated into a mixed-lot container for efficient shipment to consuming countries.

M Maersk to MTGB

MC Decaf / Methyl Chloride

Methylene Chloride (MC), or KVW (Kaffee Veredelugs Werk), also called the "European Method" of decaf, is a decaffeination process that uses a solvent to decaffeinate coffee. Coffee is soaked in near-boiling water, then washed with methylene chloride (the MC particles bond to the caffeinated molecules of the coffee), and finally the MC solvent is removed and the beans are reintroduced back into the liquid to reabsorb the oil/flavor of the beans. This decaffeination process, while using chemicals, has been deemed safe by the US Food and Drug Administration.