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."