On June 29, at the Changsha International Convention and Exhibition Center, exhibitor Alfred Antoni introduced Ethiopian coffee. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Sun Ruibo
Beijing, September 14 (Xinhua) -- When coffee beans cross the sea "in both directions"
Xinhua News Agency reporter
In early autumn, the main shop of the small café located in Guojin Street, in the center of Changsha, Hunan Province, a drink made from African coffee beans, "lemon ice coffee", has become a new hot seller, and customers are flocking to order.
The coffee beans used in "Lemon Ice Coffee" are produced in the Aletarand coffee estate in Ethiopia, thousands of miles away from Changsha. Due to its location between the plateau and mountains, the rainfall is just right, so that the coffee beans produced by this estate are full of soft fruit acidity, rich floral and fruity aromas, and high-quality sweetness, and the taste is smooth.
Although Habtamu, the 43-year-old owner of the estate, has never been to China, it has become his habit to pay attention to the feedback of Chinese consumers: "The quality of coffee bean sales in China is related to the livelihood of me and more than 100 employees of the estate." ”
Habtamu's hand-in-hand with the Chinese market across thousands of mountains and rivers has benefited from China's open economic policy – with the help of preferential policies in the China-Africa Economic and Trade Intensive Cooperation Zone, he has crossed the middleman and directly communicated with the chain coffee shops in Changsha. "The direct procurement and direct sales model can not only reduce costs, but also help more coffee farmers increase their income." In the past year, he said, 350 tons of coffee beans have been sold to China.
As the first country in the world to grow tea plants and make tea leaves, it is a Chinese cultural tradition to treat customers with tea and meet friends with tea. In recent years, affected by the continuous expansion of opening up, the popularization of coffee culture, and the diversification of consumption behaviors, coffee has won many fans in China.
According to the "2023 China Urban Coffee Development Report" jointly released by the First Financial Business Data Center and the Cultural Innovation and Youth Development Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China's coffee industry has developed rapidly, the scale of the coffee industry has developed from 165.1 billion yuan in 2021 to 200.7 billion yuan in 2022, and it is expected to reach 369.3 billion yuan in 2025, and the import volume of coffee beans has increased from 65,000 tons in 2017 to 125,000 tons in 2022.
The "West Bund International Coffee Life Festival" coffee market of the Shanghai Coffee Culture Week series of activities photographed on May 20. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Wang Xiang
From the 3rd China International Consumer Goods Fair to the 3rd China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo, from the 3rd China-Central and Eastern European Countries Expo to the 7th China-South Asia Expo, since the beginning of this year, foreign coffee categories such as Italian specialty coffee, American chain coffee, Indonesian civet coffee, Ethiopian Yegasuefi coffee have competed and won many orders.
"China's social and cultural environment and consumer market system are fully inclusive, creating basic conditions for foreign coffee brands to quickly embrace the Chinese market." Bai Ming, a member of the Degree Committee of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce of China, said, "Diversified exhibitions, convenient customs clearance channels and faster transportation methods enable foreign coffee to better enter the Chinese market." ”
There are not only coffee beans crossing the sea to China, but also coffee beans going to the ocean and from China to the world, realizing "two-way travel".
More than 95% of the coffee produced in China comes from Yunnan. "The favorable climatic conditions and unique planting technology have achieved the unique flavor of Yunnan coffee 'full beans, mellow taste, strong but not bitter, fragrant but not strong', which not only impressed many domestic coffee lovers, but also fascinated many foreign customers." Liu Haifeng, executive deputy general manager of Yunnan International Coffee Exchange Center, introduced.
More than 60% of Yunnan's coffee is produced in Pu'er. At the 2023 China International Coffee Exhibition held not long ago, the coffee beans, hanging ears and other products brought by Wu Lisha, the person in charge of Pu'er Tianjiao Yuelanshan Coffee Manor, were sold out on the second day of the exhibition.
Farmers pick coffee cherries at the Yeyatang Valley Coffee Estate in Pu'er City, Yunnan Province, November 16, 2022. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Jiang Wenyao
Different from the older generation of family members who planted and treated relatively extensive technology, the "second generation of coffee" Wu Lisha chose to try to make specialty coffee, from the application of chemical fertilizer to organic fertilizer substitution, from single washing treatment to trying advanced technologies such as sun drying and honey treatment, from planting all katim to introducing varieties such as kadura and guixia... Wu Lisha, who is bent on changing the impression of Yunnan coffee in the world of "low price and high quality", now manages three coffee bases with a planting area of 1,500 mu.
A number of industry insiders introduced that under the rapid increase in the consumption of coffee beans in China, more and more high-quality Yunnan coffee beans have remained in China in recent years. Despite this, Yunnan exported more than 20,000 tons of green coffee beans in 2022, which were sold to traditional coffee-consuming countries such as the United States and Japan.
Yang Zhusong, associate researcher at the Institute of National Conditions of Tsinghua University, believes that the reason why Chinese coffee can go global is that with the help of the open environment of the global coffee market, China's natural geographical endowments and comparative advantages of factors suitable for growing coffee have been transformed into product competitiveness in the international market.
"China's coffee going to the world benefits from the openness and inclusiveness of the global market, which also proves that embracing economic globalization and actively participating in global market production and trading can effectively promote the market growth and industrial development of China." Yang Zhusong said. (Reporters: Zhou Wenqi, Bai Xu, Zhang Yujie, Zhao Peiran, Xu Xiaoqing)