Coffee beans are collateral.
Start treating them like it.
A custody and savings bank for green coffee. Temperature-controlled vaults, a daily valuation engine, warehouse-receipt lending, bean leasing, and a disposal channel we own — so a tonne of coffee stops being dead capital.
A warehouse full of value nobody can borrow against
Green coffee sits in storage for six to twelve months. It is a real asset with a public price, a measurable grade and a known shelf life — and yet it is almost never financed at its true worth. Four reasons.
Dead capital
Six to twelve months of inventory funded entirely by working capital. The cost of carry is paid in cash flow, not accounted for.
Unpriced quality
An 86-point lot and an 81-point lot are haircut at the same rate. Quality is talked about, never converted into a number a lender can use.
Unmeasured decay
Nobody knows what a month at 28°C actually costs. It costs about 14% of pledgeable value a year — and it is invisible.
Unbankable receipts
Paper receipts, no registry, no independent audit, no discharge control. Lenders have learned to price that at zero.
Three layers, one asset class
The vault is the easy part. What makes a receipt bankable is the valuation layer on top of it and the compliance layer that stops it from being sold twice.
Custody — 18°C, 55% RH, sealed lots
Batch-level lots, sample retention for 18 months, position tags cross-verified against the digital passport.
Valuation — four factors, every day
Spot anchor, quality multiplier, temperature-adjusted decay, volatility haircut. The output is a loan, not an opinion.
Compliance — three locks, all mandatory
Registry number, independent audit, pledge state machine. Remove any one and the receipt silently becomes an unsecured loan.
A 60-tonne lot, priced honestly
| Item | Basis | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Cargo value | 60,000 kg × US$7.61/kg × 7.10 | ¥3,240,000 |
| Adjusted value at expiry | × Q 1.07 × D 0.94 | ¥3,259,000 |
| Pledge loan (52.2%) | LTV = 1 − 28.8% VaR − 6% − 8% − 5% | ¥1,700,000 |
| Storage fee (annual) | ¥0.20 / kg / month | ¥144,000 |
| Financing fee | 2.5% of loan, per annum | ¥42,500 |
| Inspection & registry | 2 events per year | ¥6,000 |
| Revenue per position | 6.0% of cargo value | ¥192,500 |
Spread alone does not carry this business. Turnover does: the same position turning three times a year earns three times, and the disposal channel is what makes the third turn possible.
Narrow the confidence interval, raise the loan
| Factor | Farm-gate green coffee | Aeroponic batch | Effect on LTV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Within-lot variance | Wide — plot, weather, process | Narrow — same recipe, same room | + tighter Q band |
| Reproducibility | Not reproducible | Same inputs, same cup | + buyer confidence |
| Yield forecast | Weather dependent | ±5% model error | + in-field receipts |
| Disposal channel | Market discount, 15% | Own roasting and retail, 8% | + 7 pts on LTV |
The last row is the one competitors cannot copy. A bank that has to sell a defaulted lot on the open market charges for that discount; a bank that owns the roaster and the café does not.
Model your own lot in ninety seconds
Volume, price, grade, storage temperature and term. The engine returns the loan, the margin-call value and the liquidation value.
Open the valuation engine