STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 21 Your trusted partner for: Enjoy the advantages of using an all-in-one supplier with a selection of more than 300 high quality orthodox and flavored tea varieties and a wide range of exclusive and innovative accessories. Dethlefsen & Balk Inc. 207 N LaSalle Street Suite #2550 Chicago, IL 60601 USA Phone: +1(312)-628-8917 info@dethlefsen-balk.us www.dethlefsen-balk.us Exceptional TEA EXPERTISE since 1836 Tea & Accessories INTERNATIONAL NORTH AMERICA Dethlefsen & Balk GmbH Hermann-Wüsthof-Ring 16 21035 Hamburg Germany Phone: ++49(0)40-731073-0 office@db-hh.de www.dethlefsen-balk.de Tea | Coffee Confiserie | Accessories Tea | Accessories Fine Taste since 1836 Smallholders across Yunnan grow specialty beans for export as well as domestic markets. Some are cupping at 85 and above. Farms in Banka in Menglian region, Yunnan Province. What types of coffee does Yunnan grow? Traditionally, the Catimor variety of coffee has been frowned upon by the specialty market. Given that at least 90% of China's specialty coffee production is Catimor, this could have posed some challenges for China as an emerging specialty producer. However, the domestic market does not carry this taboo, judg- ing the coffee on its cupping (and pricing) merits. It's not unusual to see China specialty Catimor cup- ping above 85, so the variety has not experienced resistance from the domestic market. Having said this, there were initially challenges around imported versus domestically produced coffees, with the as- sumption that imported coffees are better simply because it's imported. However, once the local market started com- paring the coffees, the domestic specialty produc- ers are the obvious choice, with lower pricing and often higher cupping performance. And in case anyone is wondering if local cuppers have the ex- perience to reliably compare coffees, there are well over 500 active Q graders in the local industry. How does the Chinese market view quality? Sometimes, the consumer side of the market can see specialty coffee merely as a cupping score. For example, it's not uncommon for us to get requests that sound like this: "I need a great coffee, something at least 86 or above." However, from the producer side of things, we see specialty coffee as some- thing that is quality (cupping), repeatable (same cupping score year-on-year), and scalable (same cupping score at any volume). The local market will have a broader view of what "specialty" means when they are pricing coffee. A simple example is that some domestic buyers now recognize that a coffee consistently cupping at 84 y-o-y and any volume is actually more valuable than a coffee bouncing between 83–87 depending on year and volume. We're strong advocates for pricing mechanisms that recognize premiums for specialty that recognize this trifecta: cups well, scales well, repeats well. What about prospects for the future? Market signaling is something we're finding in some of the mergers and ac- quisitions by multinational companies here. When you look the coffee MNCs moving into and buying out assets in China, it is a good indication that they are bullish on China coffee. I'm not going to mention names here, but if you do some Google searching, you'll quickly see the size and quantity of recent MNC activity in China coffee. Of course, this is being matched by the rapid rise of domestic companies, SeeSaw and Manner coffee would be two ex- amples.

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