There's important context: they had a signed contract that they were half way through executing on and they had been told to realise the full value of the contr

There's important context: they had a signed contract that they were half way through executing on and they had been told to realise the full value of the contract they had to deliver the coffee. The natural conclusion in that situation is "we must do anything and everything to get across the finish line so all of our effort is not for nothing" and if the contract is due to pay out $250k in a few weeks, then taking on $200k of debt is plausible. Sure, an expert in the field wouldn't make these mistakes and wouldn't take on the risk however these aren't experts and so they did not understand the risk, they thought the $250k was guaranteed if they could just get to the finish line. The debt did not exist prior to execution of the contract, the debt and contract are linked. Your comment supposes that they started out by borrowing $216k.