It is a daily ritual for millions of Australians, but if you have noticed the price of your morning flat white or soy latte increase, brace yourself — it is likely to get worse.

By the end of the year, coffee lovers will be paying up to $7 for a regular cup as cafes nationwide struggle to absorb growing overhead costs warned David Parnham, president of the Café Owners and Baristas Association of Australia.

“What’s happening globally is there are shortages obviously from catastrophes that are happening in places like Brazil with frosts, and certain growing conditions in some of the coffee growing areas,” Mr Parnham said.

“The cost of shipping has become just ridiculous.”

Key points:

  • Prepare to be paying up to $7 a cup by the end of the year
  • Shipping costs and natural disasters in coffee regions are being blamed for the price increase
  • Australians consume one billion cups of coffee annually, but cafe owners say an increase in price won’t change that

It’s nearly five times the container prices of two years ago due to global shortages of containers and ships to be able to take things around the world.

Frosts in Brazil have impacted supply.(Supplied: Melbourne Coffee Merchants)

The pain will be felt from the cities to the outback, but Mr Parnham said the increase was well overdue, with the average $4 price for a standard latte, cappuccino and flat white remaining stable for years.

“The reality is it should be $6-7. It’s just that cafés are holding back on passing that pricing on per cup to the consumer,” he said.

But roaster Raoul Hauri said it hadn’t made a dent in sales, with more than 300 customers still coming through the doors for their daily fix. “No one really batted an eyelid,” he said. “We thought we would get more pushback, but I think at the moment people understand.

“It is overdue and unfortunately it can’t be sustained, and at some point the consumer has to bear that.”

Paving the way for Australian producers

While coffee drinkers will be feeling the pinch, Australian producers like Candy MacLaughlin from Skybury Roasters hopes the increasing cost of imports will pave the way for growth in the local industry, allowing it to compete in the market.

“[In the ] overall cost of business, we haven’t been able to drop our prices to be competitive, so we’ve really worked on that niche base,” Ms MacLaughlin said.

“All those things will help us to grow our coffee plantation once more.”

Candy and her husband Marion produce 40 tonnes of coffee annually but they are prepared to scale up operations(Supplied)

She said the industry could eventually emulate the gin industry, with boutique operations cropping up across the country.

“I think the demand for Australian coffee at the moment is an ever-changing landscape and more and more Aussies are starting to question where their food comes from, who is growing it”

“What you will get is all these kinds of niche coffee plantations who develop a very unique flavour profile and then market in funky packaging and appeal to certain markets,” she said.

“That’s where I see the next stage of the Australian coffee industry going.”

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Canada Reads champion Kate Beaton wins 2024 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature

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Ducks by Cape Breton cartoonist Kate Beaton has won the 2024 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature.

The Swiss-based prize rewards works of all literary genres regardless of the language they’re written in. 

Beaton will receive 50,000 Swiss francs (approx. $79,000 Cdn) from the Jan Michalski foundation and a work of art by the draftsman Micaël.

The jury was comprised of publisher Vera Michalski-Hoffmann, novelist and biographer Jonathan Coe, author Kapka Kassabova, writer and journalist Andrea Marcolongo, novelist, visual artist and director Valérie Mréjen, writer and professor of epistemology Gonçalo M. Tavares, and novelist, poet and screenwriter Sjón.

The jury called Ducks “a profoundly moving masterpiece thanks to the courage it embodies” in a press statement.

“Featuring clean lines and dialogue imbued with great narrative force, this visual autobiography is able to embrace the most sensitive and painful questions of our time — hypercapitalism, the environment, impoverishment, sexism and sexual harassment.”

“[Ducks is] a piercing and daring graphic memoir that sheds light on the hidden side of working conditions in the oil industry through the eyes of a young woman.”

LISTEN | Kate Beaton on the common misconceptions people have about working in the oilsands:

Ducks became the first graphic memoir to win Canada Reads in 2023 when it was championed by Jeopardy! star Mattea Roach, who is now the host of CBC’s new author interview show, Bookends.

Beaton launched her career by publishing the historical webcomic strip Hark! A Vagrant which won both the Doug Wright Awards best book prize in 2012. She then published Ducks, which won the 2023 Doug Wright Award for best book and two Eisner Awards, the Harvey Award, the Ignatz Award and two Ringo Awards.

In DucksBeaton leaves her tight-knit seaside Nova Scotia community to pay off her student debt working in the Albertan oil sands where she encounters harsh realities, including the everyday trauma that no one discusses.

While the graphic memoir describes an intimate period of Beaton’s life, she still intended for Ducks to also reflect the story of her wider Cape Breton community and the harsh working conditions in places like Fort McMurray.

WATCH | Kate Beaton and Mattea Roach in conversation:

The Jan Michalski Prize for Literature has been awarded annually since 2010 by The Jan Michalski Foundation. The foundation was created in 2004 by Vera Michalski-Hoffmann in her husband’s memory.

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