Aroma of Asian specialty coffees set to spread

Aroma of Asian specialty coffees set to spread

Nao Nakanishi, Reuters, Singapore

Ever sipped some Sumatra Mandheling, Indian Mysore, Tiger
Mountain or Sulawesi Kallosi?

No? These are some of Asia's top grade coffees, already served
in specialty coffee shops around the world but yet to establish
the reputation they deserve, industry officials and traders say.

Asia has more to offer the world's cafe society than robusta
from Vietnam, which is mass-produced and often used for
manufacturing powdered coffee, industry chiefs declared when they
gathered in Singapore for a conference earlier this month.

And despite the region's tea drinking tradition, coffee
consumption in Asia is expected to grow faster than almost
anywhere else over the next five years, they said

"For coffee, Asia is now the happening place," said Paul Monk,
managing director of Bero Coffee Singapore Pte Ltd, Asian arm of
the world's largest coffee trader, Germany's Neumann Kaffee
Gruppe based in Germany.

Asia has boosted its share of the world's coffee output to a
quarter from about 10 percent 20 years ago, eating into the share
of Africa, the birth place of the commodity, he said.

And as output rose, so has Asian coffee demand -- climbing to
840,000 tons in 2001 from below 480,000 in 1985.

The region should see an annual growth of close to three
percent until 2005, compared with projected growth of 0.5 percent
in North America and one percent for Western Europe, Monk said.

Industry experts believe Asian consumption holds the key to
international coffee prices, currently hovering just above 30-
year lows under the weight of a huge overhang in supply.

The dominant Asian coffee market is also the region's dominant
economy -- Japan.

The Japanese drank the equivalent of 421,309 tons of green
unroasted coffee last year, comprising more than a half of total
Asian demand and making them the world's third largest coffee
consumer after the United States and Germany

Demand has hit record highs for three consecutive years,
despite the economic malaise plaguing the country since the early
1990s -- although more coffee is being brewed at home as the
recession bites.

Consumption is still growing, said Makoto Tsujimoto, executive
at one of the country's major roasters, UCC Ueshima Coffee Co
Ltd. He projects growth of three to four percent this year,
helped by rapid expansion in trendy self-service coffee bars
outside major cities.

A coffee cultural revolution is also underway in the world's
largest tea producer, India, which has a large middle-class among
its one billion plus population.

Coffee bars are sprouting, adding ambience and variety to
traditional shops and attracting a younger crowd, said Sunalini
Menon, chief executive of Coffee Lab Pte Ltd from Bangalore in
southern India.

With its history of growing quality tea, India also has a big
future in the world of specialty coffee, along with countries
like Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and China.

"India is tremendously underrated for the quality it
produces... The problem with a lot of very good Asian good
coffees is its poor distribution," Alan Frew from Australia, who
picks quality beans for the country's roasters, said.

"Coffee is, in many respects, like wine. Certain origins,
certain growth, certain farms, get the reputation for quality.
They can take the reputation and leverage it into higher
reputation and higher demand," he told Reuters.

Traders and industry officials said unlike some arabica grades
from Central America, such as Jamaican Blue Mountain, Asian
coffee gems are blended away.

Yet things are changing, they said, with some gourmet
retailers, such as Starbucks Corp, turning increasingly to Asian
origin beans -- and also to Asian marketplaces.

Frew is currently promoting Chinese arabica from Yunnan
province, which he said tasted almost like apples -- low in
acidity, but distinctive, beautiful and smooth.

Steen Londal, business manager in Malaysia for Denmark's
Danisco Cultor, is confident that flavored coffees will help
attract more Asians who are currently not coffee drinkers.

In the United States, the world's top coffee consumer,
flavored coffees with fragrance of vanilla, chocolate or
hazelnut, account for as much as 30 percent of its specialty
coffee market or 4-5 percent of the total consumption, he said.

"It masks the bitter taste of coffee," he said. "People who
don't like coffee will drink flavored coffees."