SEOUL, South Korea – The world’s biggest coffee roasting school is set to open in Gapyeong amid growing interest in coffee in South Korea.
The joint project by coffee company De Black and international coffee consulting firm Coffee Core Asia will see ‘Coffee Roasting Campus’, the world’s biggest coffee school, open in Misari in Gapyeong County next May.
Stretching over a 66,000-square-meter site, the new training institute will feature a number of facilities including a research center and a training site, where training programs run by internationally renowned coffee experts will be on offer.
The joint project by De Black and Coffee Core Asia comes with South Korea’s coffee-drinking culture in a phase of robust expansion.
South Korean adults on average drink 377 cups of coffee every year, with the coffee industry generating 6.4 trillion won in sales in 2016 according to government data released earlier this year.
With the growing popularity of coffee as a beverage has come an increasing number of educational institutions and coffee associations, offering training programs designed to help people with jobs in the coffee industry.
The Korea Coffee Association, for instance, a group first established in 2005, has been helping train baristas in the country, holding competitions and exams.
According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCA), one of the biggest non-profit coffee organizations that will jointly manage the new coffee school, it’s the first time the group is opening a roasting campus in Asia.
Built in 1982 and located in California, the SCA specializes in setting the criteria for specialty coffee as well as focusing on education programs to train professional coffee experts.
“Working closely with local governments, we hope to make Gapyeong the ‘mecca of coffee’ in South Korea, and try to achieve the ‘Asian center of specialty coffee’ branding,” said Hong Ju-han, the head of De Black.
Earlier this year, data from the National Tax Service showed coffeehouses are one of the most popular businesses among young South Koreans in recent years along with online shopping sites, reflecting the nation’s rapidly growing coffee consumption.
