Asian buyers compete to bid for rare coffee

It is reported that Asian buyers are scrambling to bid for rare coffee on the Internet. After fierce online auctions, the prices of these coffee beans, which are already available in the market, are soaring, even as high as silver, which is as heavy as silver.

Taiwan's Zhongshi Electronic News quoted US media on October 29 as saying that although coffee consumption in Asia is still lower than that in Europe and the United States, with the increase in the income of Asians, the demand for coffee in the region is growing rapidly, aggravating the fact that coffee is already in short supply, thus pushing up the price of coffee.

Some coffee buyers have revealed that coffee bidders from Asia often spend a lot of money to buy extremely rare varieties of coffee, which is rare in traditionally tea-drinking Asian countries such as China and South Korea.

Most of the coffee beans produced around the world are sold in bulk through growers, cooperatives and coffee traders, and only a few are sold through online auctions.

But demand for coffee continues to be hot, and Brazil, the world's largest coffee grower, has been hit by the worst drought in decades, pushing up coffee bean prices across the board. The futures price of Arabica coffee has doubled this year, rising to $2.2 a pound at one point.

In June 2012, a South Korean cafe bought several pounds of rare mocha coffee from ElInjerto, a famous coffee plantation in the western highlands of Guatemala, Central America. It was bought at a record high of $500 a pound, the same price as silver of the same weight at the same time.

People in the coffee industry pointed out that rare and high-end coffee beans are more and more favored by consumers, and mainstream coffee roasters also have to cater to the needs of the market and buy more high-quality coffee beans.