US Importer Osito Coffee Expands Operations Into Australia and Brazil

Ositocoffee.com screenshot

After launching nearly five years ago with a sibling company in Colombia, Connecticut-based green coffee trading company Osito Coffee is expanding its operations in 2023 with the opening of an Australian office and a Brazil-based export company.

The two moves in the southern hemisphere follow Osito Coffee’s 2021 opening of a European office, led by Stuart Ritson, and the launch of Colombian cacao imports.

In Australia, the Osito Melbourne office will be run by longtime specialty coffee professional Jordan Verdouw. The company expects the first shipments to land in Melbourne in first quarter of this year, while the office will focus on core green coffee offerings from Colombia, Ethiopia, Brazil, and Burundi.

Jordan Verdouw will be running the Melbourne office. Image courtesy of Osito Coffee.

The new Brazilian subsidiary, based in Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais, will be run by Thiago Trovo. According to an announcement from Osito, the business will focus on high-scoring microlots as well as larger container loads, with a particular emphasis on working with smallholder farmers.

“We work with roasters on the smallest of scales who buy a bag of coffee at a time, up through various customers who are buying multiple full container loads a year,” Kyle Bellinger, who founded Osito Coffee through a partnership with Huila, Colombia-based coffee expert Jose Jadir Losada in 2018, recently told DCN.

Bellinger said that through the expansion, the company plans to maintain its focus on long-term purchasing relationships with producers, including establishing up-front payments and pricing that far exceeds and is not necessarily attached to the “C price.”

Thiago Trovo will be running the Brazilian export operation. Image courtesy of Osito Coffee.

“What I communicate to our staff and clients is that we want to be a farmer-first business,” Bellinger told DCN. “This means forever working in the interest of our committed producer partners first before we decide what’s best for us, from a business perspective, that is.”

Osito currently offers sourcing and logistics services in Colombia, Brazil, Ethiopia and Mexico. The company also maintains a relationship with green coffee production and trading company Long Miles Coffee for sourcing in Burundi, Kenya and Uganda.

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