This year, 2015, the Coffee Museum is winding up the Memórias da Praça (Memories of the Square) project with the virtual exhibit “Coffee Exports” for the purpose of giving voice to the many workers involved in the coffee industry process – purchasing, sales and shipping of treated coffee. The exhibit encompasses accounts from coffee graders, exporters, traders and stevedores focusing on the final stage of coffee sales at the port of Santos.

Circa 1850, the rapid progress of the coffee industry, thrust coffee exports ahead of sugar sales, further increasing the volume of cargo that passed through the port of Santos, and which trade continued for a number of subsequent years making it the second most important port in the country.

Its strategic location assured a concentration of coffee exports from the then Province of São Paulo, enabling a consolidation of the commercial structure related to these operations: commissions houses or casas comissárias, exporters, brokers, banks, general warehouses and shipping companies were established in the city.

The Praça de Santos or Santos Square was, until the mid-1990s the most important coffee export center in Brazil, negotiating not only the production of beans from the state of São Paulo, but beans from such neighboring states as Paraná and Minas Gerais as well. Nevertheless, the port of Santos continues to be the major exporter of the commodity and in 2014, it was responsible for 77% of coffee exports from the country.