China Focus: Chinese tea capital brews big coffee brands

Southwest China's Pu'er City, famous for its tea, is trying to conquer the coffee market.

Outside the courtyard of Wang Zhongxue's home in the city's Dakaihe Village, coffee plants cover some seven hectares of land. This year, Wang harvested about 100 tonnes of coffee fruit.

"I didn't know that our land could grow coffee until 1992, when I met Old Wang," he said. "We used to grow corn and mangos, and our family could hardly make ends meet. Thanks to Old Wang, who taught us how to grow coffee, we can lead a prosperous life."

"Old Wang" is actually Dutch agronomist Maarten Warndorff, the first foreign expert sent by food and beverage giant Nestle to Pu'er. The company, which started growing coffee in Yunnan in 1988, has sent groups of experts, including six foreigners, to Pu'er to offer technology and training to 16,000 farmers.

Warndorff said that in the 1990s it was hard to persuade local farmers to grow coffee, since they didn't know the crop was profitable.

Wang Zhongxue became one of the first local farmers to grow coffee with the help of Warndoff.

At first, Wang removed three mu (0.2 hectare) of mango trees and planted coffee instead. "Every mu can harvest about 1,000 kg of fresh coffee fruit, which can be processed into 180 kg in coffee beans," he said.

Wang gradually expanded his coffee coverage. At the end of 2008, he restored his courtyard and expanded the coffee plants to seven hectares with the money he made from selling coffee beans.

Many of his fellow villagers who had been growing mangos and corn for generations also turned to coffee for higher profits.

Located at an average altitude of more than 1,300 meters and just south of the Tropic of Cancer, Pu'er has a humid subtropical climate suitable for growing arabica coffee.

Yunnan accounts for over 98 percent of China's national coffee production, and about 40 percent of Yunnan coffee is from Pu'er. The city exports coffee to over 30 countries and regions.

In addition to supplying coffee beans to big foreign companies, the city is trying to build its own brands.

According to Shi Lijuan, manager of Kunming JieSi Trade Co., Ltd., the company's ManLao River coffee brand has won global recognition for its quality.

The brand started as part of a government poverty-alleviation project in 1997, when some 3,000 poor farmers were moved from their depleted land to a 10,000-hectare rainforest to grow coffee.

"In order to produce high-quality coffee, we treat each part of the production process with dedication, from fertilizing and pest control to picking the fruit and drying the beans," she said. ManLao River coffee has earned organic certification in the EU, China and the United States.

Statistics from the city's coffee and tea development bureau show that total coffee cultivation area reached 51,133 hectares in 2015, yielding some 49,500 tonnes of coffee for an output value of 1.7 billion yuan, up 29.4 percent from the previous year.

Lu Han, director of the bureau, said about one-fifth of the city's coffee last year was considered "boutique coffee," selling for 24 yuan per kg. However, there are still obstacles for the city's boutique coffee industry.

"The mainstream international coffee market is still largely unfamiliar with Yunnan coffee," he said. "Even many Chinese buyers are prejudiced against Chinese coffee, believing that only foreign countries can produce high quality coffee, since coffee is an exotic plant."

He said Yunnan is trying to earn global recognition for its coffee through improved processing technology, hosting coffee-related competitions, and participating in international trade shows.

At the beginning of 2015, a coffee exchange platform was established in Yunnan to maintain supply and demand balance and promote foreign trade. Endi