[imagesource: Christian Schnettelker]

Getting work done relies largely on two things.

Your car needs petrol to get you to and from the office and meetings, and your brain needs coffee to ensure that you don’t harm anyone when you arrive there.

The news on both fronts isn’t great. A trip to the pump leaves a serious dent in the wallet – R19,54 for a litre of petrol and around R17,19 for diesel is just getting ridiculous now.

As for your coffee, we could be in for a nasty shock on that front, too. Here’s Bloomberg:

Supply woes from Brazil to Vietnam sent coffee prices to a seven-year high with poor weather, shipping snarls and soaring fertilizer costs threatening to curb supply…

In addition, early projections for the country’s 2022 crop indicate yields will trail the nation’s last high-yielding cycle in 2020-21. That will limit the rebuilding of stockpiles needed to weather the typical dip in the following harvest’s output.

That doesn’t sound like good news, and it isn’t.

Over the past year, coffee bean prices have already doubled. It’s likely that cafés and grocery stores will hike their prices as food inflation continues to impact their bottom line.

The impact will be global:

Brazil’s 2021 output plunged after drought and frost damaged trees, and rains will remain crucial for any 2022 recovery.

Second-ranked arabica supplier Colombia is struggling with excessive rains that cut yields and heightens the risk of plant disease. The two countries account for almost three-quarters of world arabica output.

A shortage of container ships, as well as that fertiliser price soaring, have also stalled large shipments.

There has been a surge in popularity in African beans (including sustainably sourced beans from Uganda and Burundi) at the same time, but it can’t make up for the shortage alone.

Christian Wolthers, the president of a large US-based importer, said prices are unlikely to drop going forward as shipping costs eat into profits for producers, exporters, importers, roasters, and retailers.

Should you stock up on coffee beans, baked beans, and retreat to your underground bunker to ride out the impending apocalypse? You do you, but before you go that route I would suggest entering Terbodore’s WIN Coffee for a Year competition.

They’ve teamed up with Le Creuset and there are three prizes up for grabs.

The main prize is quite something:

• A beautiful fig colour Le Creuset Coffee Press
• 1 x Le Creuset Botanique Box Set of 4 Cappuccino mugs
• A year’s supply of Terbodore Coffee: 4 x 250g Terbodore coffee packs of your choice per calendar month

You read that right. Free coffee for a year.

The second and third prizes aren’t too shabby, either.

There are three ways to enter, they’re all free and take just seconds, and each gains you one entry to the competition.

The only thing better than great coffee is great, free coffee.

[source:bloomberg]