India's robusta makes it to US shop shelves

Sethuraman Estates, a coffee plantation company based in Chikmagalur and focusing on ‘single-origin, estate-branded’ coffees, has managed to break into the United States coffee market by selling four containers (80 tonnes) of washed Robustas.

The US, a traditionally Arabica-consuming country, has begun to replace part of the robusta coffees sourced from various countries for their blends. It is here that India’s washed Robusta coffees have got a toe hold. Earlier, Indian robusta faced an uphill task capturing the US roasters’ attention.

“We have been exporting robusta coffees, but only sporadic amounts of consistently good coffees were exported to the US earlier. After marketing our estate-branded coffees by participating in Specialty Coffee Association of America twice, for the first-time, a significant amount of about 80 tonnes of washed Robusta coffees have been exported to the US,” said Nishant R Gurjer, managing partner, Sethuraman Estates.

The Sethuraman Estate located at Magundi in Chikmagalur started its operations in 1950s with the goal of producing the fine Robusta coffees.

“We emphasised the preparation and attention to details in the coffee processing, backed by shade trees under the arecanut and coconut trees wrapped in pepper vines. The coffees are hand-harvested and sorted. The beans are then pulped, naturally fermented, double-washed, and then patio-dried,” said Gurjer.

After two to three years of streamlining the process, the result of the efforts is two brands — the Sitara Parch-ment Robusta and the Ne Plus Ultra of Robusta coffee brands — which have secured wide acceptability in the US market, he added.

According to the Coffee Board, as on July 31, 2008, exports of different forms of coffee like instant and bulk form of both Arabica and Robusta from India to the US in 2007-08 was 4,304 tonnes or 1.97 per cent of the total Indian coffee exports and price realisation is at Rs 94,086 per tonne.

The ‘single-origin estate-branded’ coffee from Sethuram Estates fetches a premium of 25-35 per cent over what is traded on the day at London’s LIFFE. Robusta coffees is normally traded between $1,600 a tonne and 1,800 a tonne.

On the efforts of Sethuraman Estates, Coffee Board chairman GV Krishna Rau said, “For the first-time after blind tests and trials at the Specialty Coffee Association of America at Minneapolis, they came out successful to be rated. After this exercise, a significant amount of Robusta coffees have been exported to the US. So far, Indian coffees have been marketed as bulk coffees,” he added.

Based on the success of Sethuraman Estates, the Coffee Board is planning to give a push to prize winning coffees at ‘India coffee awards’ to get greater visibility in various international fairs.

“Some of the Specialty Coffee roasters in Europe and the US have adopted the coffee boards prize winning coffees into their specialty blends,” said Rau.