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Starbucks joins Yunnan Coffee Yuan

Published: 2026-04-24 Author: World Gafei

Last Updated: 2026/04/24, With the rise of Yunnan coffee industry in recent years, international coffee giants have increased their competition for Yunnan coffee beans. Following Nestl é, Maxwell, Kraft, Newman, Ikham and other five giants, Starbucks also joined the war. On the 12th, Starbucks President Howard Schultz (Howard Schultz) announced the signing of a memorandum of cooperation with the Yunnan Pu'er municipal government and the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

With the rise of Yunnan coffee industry in recent years, international coffee giants have increased their competition for Yunnan coffee beans. Following Nestl é, Maxwell, Kraft, Newman, Ikham and other five giants, Starbucks also joined the war.

On the 12th, Starbucks President Howard Schultz (Howard Schultz) announced the signing of a memorandum of cooperation with the Pu'er municipal government of Yunnan Province and the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences. According to the memorandum, Starbucks will invest and operate its world's first coffee base in Yunnan, as well as a coffee research and development center, a coffee grower support center and a coffee processing plant.

The establishment of the planting base in Yunnan means that Starbucks will directly enter the upstream planting for the first time and build the whole industry chain model. Starbucks agronomists and quality experts will work directly with coffee growers in Yunnan to provide them with resources and technical support to improve the quality of coffee beans and increase the output of high-quality coffee beans.

For Starbucks, this model will be less affected by rising raw materials. Due to the rise in coffee purchase prices this year, Nestl é's purchase proportion of Yunnan coffee has decreased from 50% to 30%. Chen Jing, an agricultural analyst at Oriental Iger, believes that the layout of the whole industry chain brings it a relatively stable procurement chain that can resist rising raw material costs, which will also reduce Starbucks' dependence on Latin America, the largest producer of coffee.

However, it will also be an expensive and time-consuming investment for Starbucks. Generally, coffee cultivation takes three years to enter the harvest period and five years to enter the stable production period. "Starbucks has always been a vertically integrated company, but now it is starting to move forward. Strategic results remain to be seen." Howard Schultz thinks.

Chen Jing also believes that the establishment of Starbucks coffee planting base in Yunnan is also conducive to the development of Starbucks localization. At present, the Chinese market is Starbucks' fastest-growing market in the world. Starbucks has more than 400 stores in China, and Schultz announced that it will accelerate its expansion to more than 1000 in the future. to make the Chinese market a "second home market" outside the United States.

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