Coffee-lovers unite for a cuppa at expo in Taipei

“Indeed, this year the show is more international than ever,” noted Hsing, who also doubles as the director of the Central America Trade Office (CATO) in Taiwan.

Participating for the first time in the show, Pierre E. Leblache, founder executive of New York-based WAGRO, said that “the Taiwanese coffee market is becoming extremely sophisticated and extremely demanding.”

“This is a trend we see all over Asia. The precursors have undoubtedly been Singapore, Japan, and South Korea. Taiwan has been number four but now is very quickly passing Singapore and South Korea. The market of course is bigger than Singapore and now it’s getting more on a par with the Western consumers like Germany and the United States, and therefore it was the obvious place for us to be,” explained Leblache.

“What we have seen is very encouraging and we’d be very pleased to come again,” he continued. “We see that (Taiwan) is such a vibrant dynamic market that there’s no reason for (it) to be ignored.”

Hsing agreed with Leblache: “For the first time, big companies are also recognizing the importance of Taiwan,” he said, pointing out the debut participation of coffee giant Starbucks in this year’s expo. “We are connecting to the world and the world is connecting to us as well.”

Coffee is an important industry and through it Taiwan is also creating economic power for other industries such as the service industry, noted Hsing. “Coffee no longer is seen as simply a beverage but as a business.”

While Taiwan does not produce large amounts of the raw material, green coffee, its strength lies in the application of know-how and processing of the imported bean for value-added re-export, observes Hsing.

Among the latest innovations in this year’s Coffee World international expo is QY-Coffee’s “Fox Dung Coffee,” made under a laboratory-controlled fermentation process that took six years to develop, according to Khanh Dinh, owner of the Vietnamese company.

Traditionally, Fox Dung Coffee is made from berries which have been excreted by the animals, in the same way that the rare Kopi Luwak or Civet Coffee — the most expensive coffee in the world — is produced.

Dinh explains that QY-Coffee’s proprietary process produces virtually the same flavor (with 95 percent similarity) as its animal-produced counterpart and at one-fifth the cost. What is more, the process can be applied to any good quality ripe berry, he adds.

The coffee expo will also host the final competition to select Taiwan’s representative to the World Barista Championship (WBC) next year in the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

1|2

PrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email