STiR coffee and tea magazine

40 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 4, 2021 (August / September) And on the growing request from customers, start- ing July this year Coffein launched a new plant for water processed decaf coffee of organic arabica, initially with a 5,000 metric tons capacity a year but already looking at expanding the capacity to 10,000 tons. "It's very exciting, we had our first batch out in July this year and we have so much demand that our water capacity already has been sold out for the entire year ahead," Eckhoff told STiR, adding: "For organic coffee, you can only use the water processing treat- ment, so we added this facility for our clients who use very high-quality organic arabica coffee." The European market remains the single biggest consumer of decaffeinated coffee with over 35% of the global revenue share in 2019, industry reports show. Even in the heartland among some of Europe's most caffeine-crazed consumers in Italy, the popularity of decaf is growing. This is particularly good news to the industry as a whole as the region is starting to bounce back from the Covid-19 pandemic, said Max Fabian, president of the Trieste-based Demus SpA coffee de- caffeinating plant. "Italy has seen a good and consolidated growth in the decaf market and now after Covid, fortunately, I see a good recovery of the market with constant growth and good volumes in the decaf segment, which is all very positive news," Fabian said. "We are a small company but with a significant market share in Italy. We've had quite a decent growth in Italy to about 7% of the total Italian market today from about 2% percent over the last 10 years, accord- ing to my evaluations. The consumer has definitively responded to quality, people want good tasting coffee, and you drink it because you like it," he said. Leading the topics that dominate industry talk for trends in decaf it's the increased focus on health ben- efits that stands out as the latest development to ben- efit industry growth. But quality of the end product and the increased interest for the softer non-chemical water treatment also continue to bring about new growth, industry officials agree. "Millennials have been preferring organically and sustainably grown, decaffeinated, and lightly roasted coffee beans. Considering the growing demand for decaf coffee, a substantial number of cafés, coffee houses, restaurants, and eateries have begun to in- clude items made of the aforementioned variants on their menu," said Grand View Research, adding that popularity of the café-culture as a lifestyle trend is expected to help boost sales of decaffeinated beverages. A 2017 study by the US National Coffee Association found that the largest single consumer group of decaf coffee in the US was people 18-24 years old, which made up about 19% of total decaf consumers in the US market. New consumers in the decaf market are not only in the form of millennials but also found within many key emerging markets, especially in Southeast Asia and Latin America, where new generations of both younger as well as growing middle-class households are becoming more edu- cated about the different products available. "In the gourmet markets here in Mexico, for example, we are seeing some parts of the market where the demand for decaf has risen to 18-20% of the sales, and in general people of all ages are much more educated about the benefits of drink- ing decaffeinated coffee," said Carlos Eduardo Lopez Romero, commercial director of CAFIV- ER, which based in the Veracruz town of Ixtaczo- quitlan is one of Mexico's biggest coffee compa- nies processing and selling both regular, roasted, soluble and decaf coffee in the domestic market and for exports. This kind of development is similar to what is registered in other countries included in research studies. The National Coffee Drinking Trends study, which is released annually by the U.S. Na- tional Coffee Association (NCA) in New York, NY, has consistently reported rising popularity and consumption of decaf beans in all forms. In its 2019 study, which was released prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, 15% of all participants re- sponded they had "decaf coffee yesterday" in 2019 up from 9% in 2018. And when asked if they had "decaf coffee in the past week" the figure soared to 20% in 2019 from 14% in 2018. As far as the future of decaf industry goes it is clear decaffeinated beans are not only here to stay but with quality of the end product continuing to grow all pointers are for healthy growth to con- tinue across the global market. "It used to be that decaf was not a good qual- ity coffee but today people are using much better qualities and with better beans and well-treated processing decaf coffee can taste really good, which is a much better deal for everybody because in the end the consumer is looking for a nice and good tasting product," said Coffein's Eckhoff. Maja Wallengren has been writing about coffee for more than 25 years from over 60 coffee producing countries across Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. She can be reached at: coffee@coffeetea.media Consumer demand for decaf is booming across the world and top arabica beans are used increasingly for organic decaf- feinated blends. Photo by Maja Wallengren

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