World Coffee Barons Eye The Tea Drinkers Of China

For if just a modest proportion of the 1.2 billion Chinese discovered a bourgeois taste for coffee it could result in an boom, with a revival of prices for Third World coffee growers and in lucrative business for Western roasters.

Shrewd marketing of convenience instant blends would be the key, said delegates at the World Coffee Conference in Hamburg. One estimate was that Chinese demand could then rise by the year 2005 by a whopping 35 times from the present 200,000 (60 kg) bags to as many as seven million.

It could be almost a million as early as the end of the century, added Pablo Dubois, an official of the International Coffee Organisation, a group of both producing and consumer nations. Statistician F O Licht who convened this week's Hamburg gathering puts the world coffee crop now at just under 100 million bags.

 

Analogies with Japan or South Korea indicate these targets are possible if everything goes right, Dubois of the ICO said.

Some participants at the session, however, while optimistic for Chinese consumption, doubted if the pace would be so rapid. Tea is the beverage of choice in China. Changes won't happen overnight, said Mick Wheeler, an independent consultant. He felt that by 2000 the Chinese could be consuming up to 400,000 bags but I disagree with forecasts going into millions just on the strength of population numbers.

Wheeler said China would show promise if the industry played its cards right. Western firms had to stress the convenience aspect of instant coffee, which already accounted for up to 75 per cent of Chinese consumption.

Chinese consumers are also looking for all-in-one convenience products with milk and sugar already added as this offers them consistency, Wheeler said.

Marketing experts believe that China, as its economy expands, may emulate Japan's trend to coffee from tea.

Japanese coffee consumption was dormant in the 1950s but has risen now above to six million bags. Coffee had become a prestige premium item that appealed to those Japanese consumers who valued US-style products and marketing, Wheeler said.

In Europe younger consumers were moving away from coffee but American-type gourmet brands were becoming popular with Japanese men in the 25-39 age group. While China held a spotlight, a coffee trade that is again coping with weak prices, scarcely higher than $1,500 for a tonne, also took some comfort from demand trends elsewhere. Luiz Marcos Suplicy Hafers, who represented the growers in Brazil, the biggest producer of beans, said demand there was expanding dramatically, eclipsing the targets charted for China.>