The market of boutique coffee beans welcomes recovery in 2014

Since the price of coffee beans plummeted in 2012, market prices have been depressed. This year, the growth of boutique coffee is mainly driven by the United States, but demand in emerging markets is still untapped. Yunnan Province of China speeds up the development of coffee industry from the aspects of building high-quality coffee bean production base, building leading enterprises, improving the level of science and technology and so on.

After three consecutive years of decline, coffee bean prices finally took a turn for the better in 2014, but in many coffee bean markets, only boutique coffee beans stand out in a single block, which can maintain a reasonable price and is not affected by the commodity cycle.

Like fine wine, high-quality coffee beans from South America and Africa can fetch high prices in the auction market, about three times the price of the average coffee bean. Although the proportion of the overall market is not high, with the improvement of consumer taste, the boutique coffee bean market has begun to grow rapidly.

"Fashion baristas and independent coffee bars are slowly affecting the way people drink coffee," said Forsyth, an analyst at consumer research firm Mintel. Coffee lovers want to know the "local conditions" of coffee beans, including geographical and geological characteristics as well as the climate of the place of origin, so there are many "super manors" of coffee beans.

Yili, president of the Italian coffee group Andraili, said that although boutique coffee beans account for less than 1/5 of the retail coffee market with an annual output value of US $80 billion (about 485 billion yuan), they have been "decommercialized." The idea that coffee is good for health, coupled with coffee merchants' emphasis on quality of life and environmentally friendly products through certification, is good for the growth of the boutique coffee market.

As of October 31, 2013, Pu'er City, Yunnan Province, exported 279 batches of coffee beans, 27361 tons, an increase of 35.4 percent over the same period last year, an increase of 41.7 percent in weight and 80.0134 million US dollars in foreign exchange earned from exports. It has been sold to more than 20 countries, including the European Union, the United States and Australia, and has been exported to Australia, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Malaysia, Poland and Romania this year.

The coffee planting area of Pu'er City is more than 600,000 mu, with an annual output of about 50,000 tons, accounting for 61.44% of the national coffee planting area and 58.6% of the national output. In recent years, the export volume is less than half of the total output, mainly because the hardware facilities and production conditions of coffee production enterprises need to be further improved, and the safety and health control measures are not strict and standardized, resulting in uneven quality of coffee beans. In addition, for the quality of Arabica small seed coffee beans produced by Pu'er, there is no complete industry standard, let alone national standard. The inspection and quarantine of coffee beans for export only depends on the contracts signed by both parties and the requirements put forward by customers in importing countries, which restricts the export of coffee beans in Pu'er city.