Historic Coffee Trader Gets $300 Million Shot
- Coffee trader with Middle Eastern origins gets syndicated loan
- Sucafina on track to be one of world’s top 5 coffee traders
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Nicolas Tamari says there are many things his grandfather Wahbe, who set up as a foodstuff trader in the Middle Eastern city of Jaffa in 1905, would recognize about the family firm today. There are also plenty of twists and turns he couldn’t have planned for.
After two wars pushed the family business from the Palestinian port to Lebanon and then Switzerland, the company, re-founded as Sucafina SA in 1977, is now based near Lake Geneva and has become one of the world’s largest coffee traders. And as the coffee industry consolidates, it’s marshaling the financial firepower to grow, securing a $300 million syndicated loan from banks including BNP Paribas SA, ABN Amro Group NV and UBS Group AG.