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Twelve-packs of Folgers, Folgers Gourmet Selections, and Millstone Coffee K-Cups line the shelves of Heinen's Fine Foods in University Heights in this Plain Dealer file photo. The J.M. Smucker Co. is cutting prices by an average of 6 percent across its coffee brands, including Folgers, but said the discounts don't apply to its K-cup pods.
(Special to The Plain Dealer)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Six months after raising some of its coffee prices, the J.M. Smucker Co. on Wednesday announced a price cut by an average of 6 percent across the majority of its coffee brands, including Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts packaged coffee sold in supermarkets.
Orrville-based Smucker, whose coffee brands account for 46 percent of its sales and more than half of its profits, said it is cutting prices in response to sustained declines in the raw green coffee futures market.
Smucker is also lowering prices on its smaller-sized canisters of Folgers ground coffee, but said the price decrease does not include K-cup pods.
In June 2014, after an unprecedented drought in Brazil and coffee leaf fungus in Central America cut the supply of Arabica beans by millions of pounds, Smucker raised its prices on Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts coffees by an average of 9 percent. Three days later, Kraft announced it was raising prices on its Maxwell House and Yuban coffees by 10 percent.
Even though Smucker said at the time that that was its first price hike since May 2011, the higher retail prices hurt Folgers sales by 20 percent.
Smucker licenses the Dunkin' Donuts brand for coffee products sold in grocery stores, mass merchandisers, drug stores and warehouse clubs, but does not make the coffee, pastries or other products sold in Dunkin' Donuts coffee shops.
The company's coffee brands include the top-selling Folgers, Millstone, Cafe Bustelo, and Cafe Pilon.
Folgers was recently named among 23 billion-dollar brands in Ohio by global brand consultancy Brand Finance. Folgers Coffee, the only Smucker brand to make the list, is worth $1.5 billion, according to Brand Finance.