The EUDR is aimed at curbing the imports of certain products from deforested areas
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European buyers have started insisting that the coffee shipped by Indian exporters from July 1 to be compliant with the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) norms.
The buyers’ stance to import EUDR compliant coffees at least six months ahead of the enforcement of proposed EUDR norms, which are set to come into effect from Dec 30, 2025, may pose challenges to the Indian coffee shipments especially the robustas as a major section of the growers and exporters are yet to gear up to comply to the proposed norms.
The EUDR is aimed at curbing the imports of certain products from deforested areas. It mandates that companies exporting commodities such as coffee and cocoa, among others, along with their derived products to the European Union markets, must conduct thorough deforestation analysis, detailed risk assessment and risk mitigation to ensure that these goods are not sourced from deforested areas since December 31, 2020. The proposed EUDR emphasises the importance of complying with laws related to environmental and social aspects with the sustainability principles embedded in them.
Playing safe
“Buyers want to play safe and are insisting early in the season that they want EUDR-compliant coffee. The app being developed by the Coffee Board to help growers comply with the norms is still in the experimental stages and is not fully ready. It could pose a problem for the shipments of robusta, as a majority of the growers of the variety are small growers,” said Ramesh Rajah, President, Coffee Exporters Association. Most of the arabica growers, who are large landholders, are investing on their own and will be compliant with the new norms.
Rajah saidwhile multinational exporters have come up with their own solutions, smaller exporters, who have not come up with a solution, may face challenges.
The European Union is the largest destination for the Indian coffee exports, which crossed $1.84 billion during the 2024-25 fiscal.
Biota Coorg, a farmer-producer company of coffee growers, has shipped about three containers of EUDR-compliant coffees, said its founder member and CEO, K K Vishwanath. “Buyers, who plan to sell the coffees to their customers in Europe, post 2025, are insisting on purchasing EUDR compliant coffee,” he said.
Different approaches
The majority of the 120 growers of Biota Coorg are already producing EUDR-compliant coffees and can provide the traceability with the compliance requirement of EUDR, Vishwanath said.
Praveen Kolimarla of Agrani Coffee and Commodities said buyers are telling us that any coffee that will be shipped from July 1 must already be EUDR aligned or compliant, and “we are prepared for that”. However, different buyers of different trading houses have different approaches to EUDR compliance in terms of what information they are requiring from the exporters.
“Starting from the basic geo-location, the polygons, to more and more detailed information that they are asking of sellers, so each one people asking them to input in certain platforms or providing it in a certain format. So that is basically increasing the complexity for the exporters, which I believe is going to be a challenge going forward till such time as this whole thing settles down,” Kolimarla said.
Published on May 20, 2025
