Thursday, June 5, 2014

Will Indonesia’s Growing Demand for Luxury Coffee Affect the Global Coffee Market?



Will Indonesia’s recent spike in demand for its homegrown luxury coffee eventually affect the global supply of top-shelf coffee? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Putting two and two together, it’s not that hard to see why a growing local demand for its homegrown luxury coffee in Indonesia might mean less of the good stuff available for foreigners that had acquired a taste for Indonesian top-shelf coffee. But is this necessarily a bad thing? 

Recent figures show that about a quarter of the world’s supply of top-shelf coffee is grown and processed in Indonesia. Since the late 1990s, a new generation of Indonesian gourmet coffee aficionados and a steadily growing number of gourmet coffee shops in every major metropolitan area across Indonesia means that there could be less of this good stuff that will be available to foreigners even though foreigners visiting Indonesia’s major metropolitan areas can still find this top-shelf coffee with ease. 

Though Indonesian coffee growers are growing more and more coffee plants to meet both domestic and export demands, figures show that at the levels they are currently expanding their coffee crops, demand will outstrip supply in as little as two years time. Will a much needed capital investments to Indonesia’s coffee farmers avert a “disastrous” global luxury coffee shortage? 

Premium coffee in Indonesia are sourced and handpicked from tree ripened coffee beans. The high quality beans must be processed separately from the lower grade ones because mixing the two and processing both results in an inferior product. But these top-shelf coffee that used to destined for export abroad are now increasingly destined for the local Indonesian gourmet coffee market.