Slow drip to China

There's a lot of coffee in Africa that's not finding its way to caffeine-keen Chinese

With a depressed market in Europe and the US, African coffee producers have been urged to concentrate more on the Chinese market, where a growing taste for arabica and robusta is gradually turning the tea-loving country into a big coffee importer.

But despite the surge in demand for coffee in China, they have been finding it difficult to make headway in exporting there.

Countries such as Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda produce more than 10 percent of the world's coffee every year, but trade with China only began in 2005.

Rwanda's coffee exports to China may have increased to 200 metric tons in 2010 from 50 tons the previous year, but this is still small beans compared with its total annual coffee exports of 30,000 tons, according to Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency in China.

Albert Rugaba, chief representative of the government agency, says this is mainly because most African coffee makers are uncertain about the Chinese market.

"The US and Europe are the traditional fields for African coffee exports," Rugaba says. "Local coffee producers are happy with the orders they've already received from the large distributors there, so they are unwilling to enter a market they are unfamiliar with."

The slowdown in the US and Europe, however, means that many African coffee traders are forced to look to other markets as sales fall, and China has potential to make up for those lost orders.

"The growth potential of China's coffee market is too big to be ignored, so we have to convince them to come to China," says Rugaba, son of Silas Rugaba, a former Rwandan ambassador to China.

In 2010, China's coffee consumption was estimated to be 25,000 tons, compared with more than 1 million tons of tea. But analysts from Barclays Capital forecast that the coffee figure will grow on average by 40 percent a year from 2011 to 2015.

Other experts say that it will at least maintain annual growth of 15 to 20 percent.

Barry Yuen, founder of the Coffee and Tea Academy of Hong Kong and chairman of the China and Specialty Coffee Association, agrees Africa should take advantage of the huge Chinese market.

"But you should also ensure that your products are consistent with Chinese flavor," he says.

Stacy Wan, a senior analyst in the coffee industry with London-based research firm Euromonitor International, says African coffee representing premium single-origin coffee, popular in Western countries, is still a niche market in China, and quality beans from Africa are hardly familiar to brand-savvy Chinese coffee drinkers.

"Coffee drinking is more like a symbol of Western affluence and friendship, and is used as a bridge in connecting people in China, rather than a habit," she says.

"When young urbanites order a latte, cappuccino or americano in Starbucks, they're mostly unaware that these names only refer to the way the coffee is prepared, and that they have nothing to do with the origin of coffee.

"Eight out of 10 Chinese would say it was Italy or the US when they were asked where coffee is from, but the truth is these countries don't even grow the beans."

Coffee drinking in China first started in the British and French concession areas in Shanghai back in the 1930s, where cafes were only frequented by foreigners and "high-class" Chinese. It is only in recent years that coffee has become accessible to ordinary Chinese households.