The humble jute bag, long the distinctive packing for Brazil's coffee exports, is rapidly being edged out as traders and co-operatives face rising wage bills and borrowing costs, weak global prices and a deepening economic crisis at home.
By introducing massive plastic sacks to replace the 60-kg (132-lb) jute bags that have dominated coffee shipments for more than two centuries, firms are saving millions of dollars a year, in a move so successful it is expected to reshape the global industry.
Until a few years ago, the world's biggest coffee producer dispatched nearly all its exports in jute bags. Next year will see Brazil export more than half its green coffee in 1-tonne polypropylene 'super sacks' or 21.6-tonne polyethylene liners.
Dinamo, the largest coffee warehouse at the port of Santos, said super sacks accounted for 30 percent of its exports in 2015 and are growing by 5 percent a year. Brazil's biggest coffee co-operative Cooxupe has nearly eliminated jute.
"It's the future," said trader Mauricio Di Cunto at exporter Comexim, which ships half its coffee in bulk. "It lets us be more aggressive in offering discounts without the cost of jute."
The 60-kg jute bag has been a standard unit of measurement for coffee trading since Brazil started commercial production of the bean in the 18th century. The grains and sugar sectors long ago moved to bulk, but coffee has been a laggard.
National data on exports in super sacks is not yet available but exporters association Cecafe is due to start monitoring their use from January. The growth in bulk handling reflects a plunge in manual labourers lifting coffee bags. Higher wages and stricter regulations, which expose industry to worker-injury lawsuits, are hastening the decline.
The calculation is compelling: one worker with a forklift can fill a container with super sacks in 25 minutes, while 9 men need nearly an hour with jute. Loading a liner is even faster as beans are dumped in loose.
It costs 22 to 40 centavos every time a worker hoists a 60-kg bag to fill a container or weigh it. Brazil produces 50-60 million bags of coffee a year.
On the cobble-stoned streets of Santos, a port that rose to fame with Brazil's coffee boom, a small team of lifters gathered recently in the morning light at the entrance of the Dinamo warehouse, one of two that still handles coffee at the port.
"We used to have 59 lifters on a shift, now we have nine," union leader and former lifter Carlos Roberto Lima reflected. The move to bulk treatment of coffee is taking place as global raw materials prices fall with slower demand growth in emerging markets like China. The price of coffee, which is Brazil's sixth most valuable commodity export, has fallen by more than 60 percent from highs in 2011 to $1.17/lb. International Coffee Organisation Executive Director Roberio Oliveira said the move to bulk is helping Brazil adapt to just-in-time logistics to manage stocks better as prices decline.
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