The journey of coffee from Africa to China

Coffee originated in Africa and little is known about it. In fact, Africa Ethiopia is the hometown of coffee, producing the best Arabian coffee in the world. Soil, weather conditions and an altitude of more than 2000 meters above sea level have made many countries in Africa create an ideal scene for the growth of coffee.

At present, coffee production in Africa accounts for about 13% of the world's total output, and coffee income is an important source of GDP and exports of some African countries. Ethiopia's coffee exports are the largest source of the country's foreign exchange earnings, accounting for more than 35 per cent of the country's total foreign exchange income, about 25 per cent of its people's livelihood is directly or indirectly related to coffee, and 40.5 per cent of GDP and 20 per cent of taxes come directly from the coffee industry.

According to Anduram, an Ethiopian, coffee cultivation is an important income for Ethiopians, and its output ranks second in Africa. Eighty-five percent of households in Ethiopia grow coffee, and other cash crops include flowers, sesame, beans and so on. Ethiopians grow coffee in almost every household and drink coffee every day, and coffee shops can be seen everywhere on the streets. As for the price of coffee, of course, it is also very low. Each kilogram of coffee in Ethiopia costs only 80 bill (16 bill to the dollar), or US $5, or more than 30 yuan, which is only enough to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks in China. The noble character and low price are the distinctive marks of African coffee, which have won it a high reputation at home, attracting many well-known European and American buyers to purchase in Africa, including Starbucks in the United States and St. Spurs in the United Kingdom.

Chinese tea ceremony has a history of thousands of years. As the origin of tea in the world, people more or less ignore or turn a blind eye to foreign drinks such as coffee in their consumption habits and viewpoints. The coffee culture of Chinese mainland should have originated in the Anglo-French-Japanese concession in old Shanghai, while the cafes at that time were infested by foreigners and upper-class Chinese, and did not enter the life of ordinary people. Until in recent years, with the impact of foreign culture and the change of life organization, coffee has become more and more popular in China, and the coffee culture in China has gradually flourished.

For China's coffee market, many differentiators feel that the market is complex and has great potential for growth. According to the statistics of the domestic coffee organization in London, compared with an average global growth rate of 2%, China's coffee consumption is growing at an astonishing rate of 15% a year. Chinese people drink an average of only three cups of coffee a year, compared with 500 to 700 cups for Americans.

With the rise of Chinese coffee culture, people gradually have a taste of African coffee, and even many coffee lovers turn to practice and sell African coffee in China after tasting African coffee. However, the sales volume of African coffee in the Chinese market is still very small, and most people mention that African coffee is still boundless.

When talking about the scene of Rwandan coffee exports to China, Mr. Albert, chief representative of the China Representative Office, said bluntly that the country's coffee exports to China accounted for a small proportion of its total exports. "the annual output of coffee in Rwanda is about 30,000 tons, while less than 1,000 tons of coffee is exported to China, accounting for a very small proportion." Mr. Albert said, "the latest data we have today are from 2008 to 2009. The export value of Rwandan caffeine to China is about 100000 US dollars, roughly between 50 and 100 tons." In 2010, the amount of coffee imported into China was very small, mainly if the cooked beans were already packaged. There are both raw beans and cooked beans imported in 2011. "

Faced with the emerging complex market of China, African coffee has always been in a lukewarm, slow growth stage, in which the notice is in many aspects. First of all, compared with the inherent tea culture of Chinese tradition, the rise of Chinese coffee culture is short and its influence is declining.

Whether a city's coffee culture is dense or not can be intuitively familiar with its coffee sales. Just take Beijing and Shanghai, the two major cities of China, as an example. Shanghai had related coffee promotion in the 1930s, and coffee had already entered the Shanghai market at that time. The development of coffee culture in Shanghai has experienced half a century of Thai history. The coffee culture in Beijing sprang up late and created a short time. When it comes to drinks in Beijing, people may still remember the big bowl of tea in old Beijing. The divergent coffee culture between the two cities brings about completely different market sales. According to Xianrong, the head of a company that sells Ugandan coffee in Beijing, the sales of Ugandan coffee sold in Shanghai are much larger than in Beijing, and can even double.

African countries lag behind in the scale of coffee processing and packaging, and the lack of influential private brands is another sign of their slow growth in China. Due to the growth and decline of the scale of coffee processing and packaging in most African countries, the largest export of African countries is the export of raw coffee beans. After purchasing raw coffee beans from Africa, domestic coffee processing enterprises are processed, packaged and crowned with their own brands. As a consumer fact? By the time we came into contact with coffee products, it had changed into "Italian coffee" and "American coffee". Most people had no way to smell the original origin of coffee.

Export in the form of raw beans is a helpless choice for the African coffee industry, and in many cases, African countries prefer to approve exports in the form of raw beans. Mr. Albert first said, "there are two important considerations on the question of whether the imported coffee is ripe or raw." On the one hand, there is the question of freight. Unless China imports a large amount of cooked beans from Rwanda, for example, reaching a container. If the import volume is very small, it needs to be transported by plane, and this kind of freight is too expensive. Another is the consideration of tariffs. China has set preferential tariffs on some African goods, in which raw coffee beans do not have to pay import tax when imported into China, but only need to pay VAT, while cooked beans are subject to import tax and VAT. " Attracted by the tax policy, many enterprises prefer to approve the export of raw beans and pack and sell them after entering China. "Coffee plus property in Rwanda is a promising industry. At present, the coffee industry in Rwanda has only simple processing such as baking and packaging. As for deep processing such as instant coffee, it has not yet been realized, nor can it meet domestic standards. " Mr. Albert made amends.

The African coffee industry does not pay enough attention to the Chinese market, or the Chinese consumer market is not enough to attract the fun of the African coffee industry. "in terms of sales, the demand for coffee produced in Rwanda is basically excessive supply, and our supply and demand contracts with foreign buyers are usually five years, so there is no selling pressure. After the flash of the European debt crisis in 2010, orders from Europe and the United States were cut, and we only initially focused on the Chinese market. " Said Mr. Albert at first.

In addition, the bad luck of the African coffee industry in China and the lack of brand awareness all contribute to the slow itinerary of African coffee's trip to China. With the increasingly close economic and trade relations between China and Africa in recent years, the Chinese have become more and more familiar with Africa, and more and more Chinese people have tasted and fallen in love with African coffee, and many of them have consciously assumed the role of African coffee publicity ambassadors. vividly in the Central African coffee market.