ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the power of the white planters in the domestic marketing of coffee was almost wholly determined by the functioning of a private market in coffee. The market problem of the dominant class fractions in the post-colonial coffee market is to work out how to ensure that the market stimulate the appropriation of smallholder surplus by dominant class fractions but at the same time does not drive these into competition with each other. Foreign ownership remains at the exporter pinch point in the post-colonial coffee industry but this is not a crucial factor in the export of Papua New Guinea coffee. Multinational exporters probably save on information costs due to their world-wide information networks, and therefore might experience some advantage on profitability. Coffee International Ltd (CIL), the second largest exporter, is also vertically integrated in the industry.
