Photo: Flickr.
China has been betting on the coffee industry in the world, involving the Colombian coffee producing industry in the almost fifty thousand Chinese coffee shop installations around the world, according to the British organization Allegra World Coffee Portal.
During 2023, the number of Chinese-branded coffee shops increased by 58 percent, for which it expects to collect 369.3 billion yuan by 2025 (i.e., more than 199 billion pesos). Colombia has been one of the main drivers of this industry, providing essential raw materials for this industry.
Although the Asian country is traditionally a tea consumer, recently there has been an increasing consumption of coffee, especially among the young population. For this reason, today approximately 8,500 coffee shops can be found in Shanghai alone, mostly located in the “coffee street” or Yongkang Street.
Even companies such as Starbucks have successfully reached the Asian market. Today, this U.S. company has 7,000 locations in the country, projecting to have 9,000 by 2025, according to MSN news.
Moriz Yu, co-founder of Yongpu, a Chinese coffee brand, gave an interview to Andrés Osorio, who is a correspondent for the Chinese media Xinhua; in this interview, Yu highlighted the increasing consumption of coffee by the Asian population and therefore, the increase in its sales.
Yongpu is a company that is characterized by innovation and thanks to this, today they dispatch two cups of coffee every second, through the offer of products in live broadcasts.
“In the Chinese market we can process Colombian coffee of high quality and on a large scale so that national consumers can acquire it comfortably”, he explained, highlighting the benefits of his sales channel.
Colombian coffee is one of the varieties sold by Yongpu, where he pointed out that “at this moment 15,000 people are viewing it online”, thus evidencing the acceptance that Colombian coffee has within the Asian community, which in Yongpu alone has sold more than 300 million Colombian coffee beans.
According to an interview conducted by Xinhua with the vice president of ProColombia, Juliana Villegas, it was highlighted that during the last decade exports of Colombian green coffee have grown in an outstanding manner, growing approximately 55 percent each year, between 2014 and 2022.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected several national industries, but not coffee, as Villegas says in this interview “during the pandemic, coffee consumers in China were more interested in the preparation methods and the qualities of the product. The closing of coffee shops, the option of that remote work that we all had to live with, boosted much more the consumption of coffee at home. This growth in the retail market opened up another important opportunity”, he explained.
The growth of this industry within the People’s Republic of China is very important for the country, since it not only gives great recognition to the Colombian coffee varieties, but it is also the livelihood of around 540,000 families in the country.
Main source:
El café colombiano ‘marca la pauta’ en China: así se vive la experiencia en Shanghái| MSN. (2024, Marzo 21). https://www.msn.com/es-co/noticias/other/el-café-colombiano-marca-la-pauta-en-china-así-se-vive-la-experiencia-en-shanghái/ar-BB1kiURC
Other related sources:
ENTREVISTA: Siguen creciendo exportaciones de café colombiano de alta calidad hacia China (2023, Mayo 06) Xinhua, China-Celac Fórum. http://www.chinacelacforum.org/esp/zgtlmjlbgjgx_2/202305/t20230505_11070911.htm#:~:text=Añadió%20que%20las%20exportaciones%20de,este%20producto%20cobró%20en%20China.
El café colombiano ‘marca la pauta’ en China: así se vive la experiencia en Shanghái (2024, Marzo 22) El tiempo. https://www.eltiempo.com/amp/mundo/asia/el-cafe-colombiano-marca-la-pauta-en-china-asi-se-vive-la-experiencia-en-shanghai-3326845