Tracking Weather Impacts on Global Coffee Markets

Uncharted Waters has partnered with Single O, a Sydney-based independent coffee roaster, to monitor how weather extremes affect coffee production and trade worldwide.

Single O sources single-origin coffee from twenty-six countries, with roasting operations in Australia and Japan supplying over 500 independent cafes. Like much of the coffee industry, the company has faced sharp price volatility in recent years. After reaching multi-year highs in 2024 and 2025, coffee prices remain elevated — a direct consequence of weather disruptions in key producing regions including Brazil and Vietnam. Climate-related production shocks are becoming harder to anticipate using historical patterns alone, as events now frequently coincide across multiple regions, compounding market impacts.

Current forecasts place the probability of El Niño conditions at 58–61% from May through the end of 2026 — a pattern historically associated with drought stress in parts of Asia and Latin America. This makes 2026 an important year to track weather impacts on coffee production closely.

In this pilot, Uncharted Waters is developing and testing a tracking tool that draws on its digital twin framework — integrating real-time climate data with crop and trade modeling — to assess weather impacts across the global coffee supply chain. Working with Single O, we are exploring how this kind of analysis can support sourcing decisions in practice.

This project is supported by the Australian Government's Industry Growth Program.