Phl coffee exports go ‘green’

MANILA, Philippines - The Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM) launched the DE program or the Development in Export of Coffee Beans, among a few other commodities, which are considered high-value products.

Together with the Philippine Coffee Board, CITEM displayed select Philippine coffees in the prestigious ANUGA Food show in Cologne, Germany last October. Featured were the Benguet Arabica, Sulu Washed Robusta and even Civet Coffee from Sulu, or Kahawa Kubing. 

Unlike previous exports of coffee which promoted roasted beans, the thrust of CITEM is to now export coffee in green beans or unprocessed or unroasted beans.

With the growing trend for Third Wave coffee shops who have the need for single origin coffees, green coffee is the way to export. These specialty cafes have their unique roasting techniques, and prefer to “finish” coffee their way. This also ensures that coffee beans are freshly-roasted closest to point of use. These cafes also identify the origin or source of the coffees, sometimes even up to the very farmer who harvested the coffee beans.

The other global trend is micro roasters for coffee (like micro breweries for beer), which are now present in many parts of Korea, Japan, the US and Europe. Korea, for example, has grown its imports of coffee in value, not necessarily in volume. This can only mean that Korea is a growing market for better quality coffee, requiring exporters to send their coffee “in the raw” or in green bean form.

CITEM got favorable results from the first exhibition in Germany, and soon they will be carrying these green coffee beans, sold in micro lots of one pound to one kilo, in the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco in late January.

Upcoming shows like Gulf Food in Dubai, FOODEX Japan in March and Seoul Food will be interesting markets for specialty products such as coffee. The industry can only thank CITEM’s forward-looking management for thinking of such a program such as DE. With the country’s small production of 25,000 metric tons of green coffee, the coffee board recommends that a good percentage be processed for the export specialty markets. This will put our country back on the coffee map of the world.

At a recent meeting with Foreign Trade Service Corps of the Department of Trade and Industry, many of the trade officers welcomed this development to bring our specialty products to North Asia, the US, Scandinavia, the UK, Europe and the Middle East. CITEM’s team headed by Rosvi Gaetos and Leah Ocampo with consultant Rosemarie Kwan truly have broken new ground through the DE project.

The coffee industry has about 50,000 farmers as stakeholders. The biggest producers are from Sultan Kudarat and Cavite, while specialty coffee are coming from Sulu and Mt. Apo and Cordillera.

For information on green coffee for export, contact CITEM or the Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC). www.dti.gov. or [email protected]