Bringing coffee back to OZ with you on the plane

C-man

Does custom's worry about it?

Green or roasted? does it need to be sealed?

What's the drill?

C-

eggbert

Roasted and sealed is fine as long as it isn't any of that civet cat shit. Not sure about unsealed. Green they don't like.

C-man

I am going to Bali where they do that Civet cat shit beans Are they just a gimmick or any good? If they were roasted and sealed would they let them into the country? most likely too expensive for me anyway.

eggbert

Watch out for the "coffee plantation" tours in Bali, most really are just a shitty tourist attraction. The only thing I found worth buying from them was vanilla beans. The coffee's they give you are made in the local style and are vile. We brought some coffee back (I think purchased in Malaysia, but came back to Darwin via Bali), and they didn't mind the roasted coffee, but the first question they asked when I mentioned having coffee was "Is it kopi luwak? Because you can't bring that back into the country." Kopi Luwak apparently is allowed by customs - and I would estimate that 99.9% of it is shit - not worth wasting your money on. Green beans for personal consumption still seem to need a permit to bring into the country, will be inspected and may need to be fumigated by Aqis. Roasted beans are fine as long as the packaging is new.

cosmic_couple22

Roasted and sealed is fine green is not. When you going C-man.

mycuppa

You can bring up to 5kg of raw coffee back into Oz with your as luggage. My suggestion though is that if you are planning to do this, then arrange or enquire about a permit with AQIS beforehand. The rules and regs. are not always straightforward, or consistently interpreted by everyone in the chain, despite appearing simple and clear. I have been through this exercise many times over the last 10 years and on 2 occasions, the goods were taken from me through the final customs area at the airport terminal with baggage searched and sent for Bromide treatment (at no cost, but not happy) at an AQIS facility in Sydney. Once it was from a returning trip to VN and the other was from Indonesia. To this day, I still don't know why and discussing and protesting when jet lagged did not help the situation at all. Other times, 5kg of raw coffee has come through perfectly with no incident. In late 2007, I organized a fully compliant permit from AQIS for a 120kg skid of trial sample beans to be imported from Asia and despite having done all the right things in AUS, the customs muppets claimed that the paperwork at origin was not correct - so into the Bromide it went. Of course, none of this was controllable as I was in Melbourne and the manifest was trapped in Sydney - all I got was a letter mailed to me notifying me of the action that was being taken on my behalf and the potential for costs to be applied if it was further deemed as dangerous goods - which by the time the snail mail arrived it was too late - not happy, yellow beans. Processed products in sealed packaging are different, but you should be well informed of the requirements beforehand so that you can "talk the lingo" in case of an explanation being requested. A family member brought in a whole pile of various sealed products from VN and the super-cautious customs agent decided to break open some packs because they suspected all was not as it seemed, despite multiple passes through Xrays, etc. Luckily I was not looking forward to drinking that coffee anyway.......not a fan of chicory in my espresso.

C-man

Customs always stops and searches us, just because of my beautiful younger wife. I am used to them as I travel a lot, just never brought back any coffee before.