SEOUL, South Korea — The South Korea’s domestic coffee market surpassed for the first time in 2017 the 10 trillion won-mark. The market value stood at 11.7 trillion won, almost US$11 billion, the country’s Customs Service reported last week – three times as much as in the late 2000s.
This equals to 26.5 billion cups being served last year, or a per capita consumption of 512 cups.
Disaggregated data on consumption show that the category of coffee mixes ranked first accounting for well over 13 billion cups, followed by fresh roasted coffee, making up 4.8 billion cups, with the remainder being canned coffee and various coffee-flavored drinks.
The average prices for a cup of fresh roasted coffee stood at 1,636 won (US$1.5), with this market reaching 7.85 trillion won market last year, while in 2007, it stood at just 900 billion won.
Related to future prospects, a coffee industry source said that while the overall market has grown sharply over the years, per capita consumption of coffee is far below that of such countries as the United States, Germany and many European countries so there is still considerable growth potential.
