SÃO PAULO – Coffee industry insiders at the three-day São Paulo Coffee Festival, which ended on Sunday, said they were optimistic about the prospects of the Chinese specialty coffee market.
The festival attracted coffee lovers and companies from Brazil and abroad to enjoy the beverage, and it offered consumers abundant coffee-related experiences, including music, art and gastronomy.
Noting “specialty coffees are very people-oriented,” Caio Fontes, director of the São Paulo Coffee Festival, told Xinhua that coffee is an integral part of Brazil’s culture and has a “very emotional and social connection with Brazil.”
The event aimed at spreading information about and knowledge of specialty coffee among more people, as Brazil is the world’s largest coffee exporter and one of the best coffee producers, Fontes added.
Hélcio Júnior, the co-founder of Brazilian specialty coffee producer Unique Cafés, which was established 15 years ago and has already entered the Chinese market with continuous export growth, said that cooperation between China and Brazil is “fundamental.”
Júnior said that Unique Cafés attends trade fairs and exhibitions in China every year in order to understand the market better. “For a gigantic market like China, we have basic coffees and fine and specialty coffees.”
Santa Monica is a coffee producer from the southern state of Minas Gerais with a history of cooperating with China. Marcelo Moscofian, CEO of Santa Monica, told Xinhua that China is “a great market”, adding that business cooperation will be “much bigger in the future.”
“We started exporting coffees in 2018 and the Chinese market has always been a market that we wanted to export to, because of its volume and because it’s a very new market for coffee,” he said.
Santa Monica sent a business delegation to China in 2019 and signed an MOU with a Chinese partner on opening a roasting plant in China to carry out the whole production process.
“We know that China is a country that has a huge potential. It is the largest consumer market in the world but not yet the largest consumer of coffee, but it surely will be,” Moscofian said.
Jeffery Young, another industry insider who believes that the future of China’s specialty coffee market is very promising, said that China is “a massive opportunity on the world stage for coffee.”
Young, the founder and CEO of London-based Allegra Group, and also the brand owner of São Paulo Coffee Festival, praised the sound development of China’s specialty coffee sector over the past five years in terms of barista culture, latte-making skills and automated equipment.
The company is planning to launch a coffee festival in Beijing or Shanghai which “could be the biggest worldwide,” he said, adding that a Beijing or a Shanghai coffee festival could be “a real game changer for the world” and Allegra Group “would like to be involved.” – Xinhua
A barista prepares coffee during the São Paulo Coffee Festival in São Paulo last week. – Xinhua
