The standard forms of contract set out generally
accepted rules, practices and conditions in the international trade in coffee
for which the terminology and precise meaning have been standardized under the
aegis of leading coffee trade bodies (for Europe the European Coffee Federation
(ECF), and for the United States the Green Coffee Association of New York (GCA)
*. Both associations publish a number of contracts dealing with different types
of transactions. Most coffee is traded using these standard contracts. Others
exist (AFNIC/Dutch) but are rarely used.
All ECF and GCA
contracts state expressly that no contract shall be contingent on any other and
that each contract is to be settled between buyers and sellers without reference
to any other contracts covering the same parcel.
Although intended to cover string contracts
this also means exporters cannot claim inability to ship because someone else,
say an interior supplier, let them down. (Traders sometimes buy and sell
matching contracts many times, causing a single shipment to pass through a
number of hands before reaching an end-user. Such contracts are called string
contracts.)
* The GCA contracts are also available in an
electronic or XML (extensible mark-up language) version, together with a price
fixing letter, a price fix rolling letter, and a destination declaration letter.
The data files are available, free of charge, from the GCA www.green--coffee-assoc.org. For more information
on using the XML versions exporters should contact their US buyers or
agents.