World coffee supplies at risk due to earthquake in Colombia

Colombia has virtually halted coffee exports after a devastating earthquake damaged transportation infrastructure and blocked key roads to the country’s main port for shipping the commodity.

This is reported by Bloomberg.

The main port for exporting Colombian coffee, Buenaventura, has effectively lost transport links to other regions due to blockages and damage to roads leading to the Pacific coast.

Gustavo Gomez, head of the Colombian coffee exporters’ association Asoexport, said the industry has suspended operations for now. Individual shipments are still possible, but full-scale coffee exports have stopped. There is no exact information yet on when road traffic will be fully restored.

Alternative ports in Cartagena and Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast continue to operate without significant disruption. However, exporters are unable to quickly redirect cargo there due to an acute shortage of freight transport.

The situation is complicated by the busy harvest season in the southern departments of Cauca, Nariño, Valle del Cauca and Huila. Producers from these regions traditionally export coffee through Buenaventura.

In addition, a significant part of processing and transportation enterprises is located near the epicenter of the earthquake.

According to Gomez, there is currently no information about serious damage to production facilities. At the same time, enterprises are experiencing power outages and communication problems. The earthquake has also directly affected workers in the industry, some of whom have lost their homes.

The halt in exports could affect global supplies. Colombia is the third-largest coffee producer after Brazil and Vietnam, accounting for about 7% of global production. It is also the second-largest supplier of high-quality coffee.

In 2025, Colombia produced 13.4 million bags of coffee weighing 60 kg each. On average, the country exports about a million such bags each month.

Every day of logistics disruption adds to delivery delays. The build-up of inventory can also cause shipping queues even after transportation is restored.