JAB upends coffee trading
The owner of Peet’s and Pret a Manger is pressuring suppliers already ground down by low prices
BRAZIL, GUATEMALA or Kenya are the sorts of exotic locations that most people would associate with the cup of coffee that kickstarts their day. But increasingly it is Luxembourg that is providing the coffee business with an industrial shot of caffeine. JAB Holding, a private-investment company based there, has rapidly become the world’s second-largest coffee retailer and roaster. On February 14th the firm, which looks after the fortune amassed in the chemicals industry by Germany’s secretive Reimann family, said it planned to list its coffee empire in a couple of years.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Storm in a coffee cup”
Business February 23rd 2019
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- The future of Chanel without Karl Lagerfeld
- Nvidia plays the diversification game
- The new aristocrats of power
- JAB upends coffee trading
- America and its allies disagree on Huawei
- Why retired people could be ideal customers for self-driving cars
- Conglomerates will never die out, but their form is evolving
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