The Indonesian coffee industry is eyeing to increase its share in the fast-growing Chinese coffee market. To this aim, eight Indonesian coffee businessmen met entrepreneurs from China to formulate strategies to increase the value of exports to the world’s most populous country.
“We took the initiative to collect them in order to achieve the formula to increase Indonesia’s coffee exports to China,” said the Consul General of Republic of Indonesia in Guangzhou, Ratu Silvy Gayatri.
The meeting, which was packaged in the FGDs last week, also involved the South China Indonesian Businessmen Association (SCIBA) and the Specialty Coffee Association of Indonesia (SCAI) as well as entrepreneurs from Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Coffee exports to China from January to September reached US$34.1 million. Indonesia is the second-largest coffee-exporter to China after Vietnam, whose coffee export value reached $368.8 million in the same period.
Silvy expressed optimism that Indonesia would be able to increase its coffee market share to China because Indonesian coffee was competitive in the global market.
“Indonesia is one of the four largest coffee-exporting countries, together with Brazil, Vietnam and Cambodia,” he said, adding that the coffee market in China had grown about 15 percent annually, far higher than the global coffee consumption per capita increase, which was at 2.3 percent annually.
The Indonesian Embassy in China projected that in 2020, the coffee industry in China would reach US$442.87 billion.
“It is because of lifestyle changes among the young generation in China, who like coffee very much,” he said, adding that coffee plantations in Yunnan and Hainan could not meet the whole country’s demand.
