Is the coffee market really 100% Arabica? A close look at Taiwan's supply chain

 

Arabica has specific uses, and the difference in taste is very obvious. Arabica is generally used for instant coffee, or in lattes to add body.

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In Taiwan, green coffee bean traders, apart from some who go to the places of origin to purchase directly, almost all buy coffee beans from large international-level green bean traders. However, the purchasing process is full of variables, so domestic green bean traders need to implement quality control even more.

 

Interviews = Tsai Hsing-ju, Huang Hsin-pei, Huang Ching-hsiang

Text = Huang Ching-hsiang

 

When it comes to importing green coffee beans, what is the first method that comes to mind? Do you think Taiwan's coffee shops or packaged coffee manufacturers all buy processed green beans directly from places of origin or estates? Actually, they do not.

 

When discussing the possibility of mixing low-priced Robusta beans into products labeled "100% Arabica beans," FoodNext interviewed major domestic green bean traders, including Shoucheng Food Ingredients Co., Ltd., Fengrun Co., Ltd., Lianjie Coffee Enterprise Co., Ltd., and Yuanyou Enterprise Co., Ltd., and all gave a fairly firm answer: "Green bean traders would never do something that smears their own reputation!" Why can they give this answer so confidently? Is it true? And when brand owners buy coffee beans from green bean traders, how can they avoid being deceived?

 

The key gateway in the coffee bean trade: green bean traders

 

In the green coffee bean trading market, there are roughly two types: "commercial coffee beans" and "specialty coffee beans (Specialty Coffee)." Commercial coffee beans are produced in large quantities and are traded according to the international futures market. Specialty coffee beans, if translated literally from the English as "characteristic coffee beans," have stronger distinctive flavors than commercial beans and have been expanding continuously in Taiwan's market in recent years.

 

Depending on the type of imported green beans, Taiwan's green bean traders can be divided into those mainly dealing in commercial beans, such as "Shoucheng" and "Fengrun"; and those mainly dealing in specialty beans, such as "Lianjie" and "Black Gold Specialty Coffee Roasting Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as Black Gold Coffee)." The former not only supplies chain coffee shops but also packaged coffee businesses, while the latter mostly supplies coffee shops for freshly brewed coffee. In addition, "Yuanyou Enterprise Co., Ltd.," which has the largest coffee roasting plant in all of Taiwan, and the major Japanese coffee company "UCC" are also major suppliers of roasted coffee beans in Taiwan, supplying chain convenience stores, packaged coffee businesses, and others, and because of production demand, they also import large amounts of green beans themselves.

 

However, in Taiwan, apart from some green bean traders who go to the places of origin to purchase directly, almost all buy coffee beans from large international-level green bean traders. Why is this? In fact, it is to spread risk. "These very large international traders often handle transactions on the scale of tens of thousands of tons. Think about it: if they can operate at a scale of more than ten thousand tons, it shows that their purchasing power and quality control capability at the places of origin have reached a certain level," explained Chu Mao-heng, assistant vice president of Yuanyou's Specialty Division. This kind of partner is the first choice for bulk purchasing, not only because the risk is lower and risk can be transferred, but also because payment and return mechanisms are more mature, and more importantly, there is no need to worry about supply interruptions.

 

Generally, domestic green bean traders purchase green beans from international green bean traders according to customer needs and import them to Taiwan by sea. But there is another import method: the Japanese company "Mitsui & Co., Ltd." is also one of the major domestic green bean importers. Their method of importing beans differs from that of other green bean traders: green beans shipped to Taiwan by sea first enter a bonded warehouse, and then operators with import qualifications go to pay the commodity tax and obtain approval before they can take the green beans.

 

Purchasing is full of variables! Test samples may not match the goods that arrive

 

However, the purchasing process is full of various variables. Weng Ming-hsiang, manager of Shoucheng, shared that the coffee bean grading we often hear about is actually a method only used for commercial beans; every country and region grades coffee beans according to its own standards, such as defect rate, altitude, and density. But occasionally, a Grade A product is ordered and secondary-grade goods are received instead.