Starbucks Coffee Co said on Friday it would raise the price of its packaged coffee by an average of 12 percent after its chief executive Howard Schultz once again blamed speculators for pushing coffee prices higher.
“I think it’s artificial. I think financial speculation has really stepped into the market,” Schultz said, adding that coffee drinkers would not “respond positively” to higher prices.
“I think it’s a very hard dialogue with the consumer, face to face, as we have to as a retailer, when in fact there probably isn’t a substantive answer,” Schultz said.
Shares of Starbucks, the world’s biggest coffee shop chain, closed down US$0.13, or 0.4 percent, at US$34.96.
The price increase will affect Starbucks and Seattle’s Best Coffee brands. It is the company’s first price increase on grocery packaged coffee since March 2008.
Starbucks raised prices last year on some drinks in its cafes.
May arabica coffee futures increased US$0.053 on Friday to finish at US$2.762 per pound (0.45kg).
The arabica market was up 0.65 percent on the week.
Analysts said tight supplies of high-quality washed arabica beans had bolstered the market. Short-covering boosted arabicas because investors were nervous ahead of the weekend with fighting in Libya and the crisis in Japan.
“Every supplier that I talk to, every producer, first thing I ask is: ‘Is there any problem with supply and demand?’” Schultz said at the National Coffee Association meeting on Friday.
He said they answer no.
Global stocks are at the lowest level since the International Coffee Organization (ICO) began keeping records in 1965. The ICO has said stocks could fall lower.
Many roasters have passed along higher costs to consumers. Most recently, Kraft Foods raised its list prices for most of its Maxwell House and Yuban roast coffees by 22 percent, its fourth and biggest increase in the past year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day