Ethiopia taps growing coffee potential

ADDIS ABABA — In a bustling coffee processing plant filled with the aroma of top-notch Arabica coffee in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, a group of women was busy sorting out defective green coffee beans to ensure that only the finest quality beans move on to the roasting and packaging stages.

Each woman can sort defects from up to 150 kilograms of raw coffee beans each day at the Hadero coffee processing plant. The sorted green coffee beans would then pass through the inspection, roasting, grinding and packaging stages before they are sent off to the shelves of supermarkets and coffee shops in Ethiopia and around the world.

Named after a small coffee-producing town in southern Ethiopia, Hadero is among the rapidly growing list of coffee processing businesses in Ethiopia that specialize in coffee value addition, as part of a broader push to transform the country's coffee industry.

"We are a homegrown company, and we aspire to increase Ethiopia's earnings from the export of coffee through value addition and proper marketing," Mubarek Ahmed, Hadero's director of business development, said.

Amir Hamza, chairperson of the African Fine Coffees Association, said Ethiopia and other coffee-producing African countries need to concentrate on value addition and apply better marketing strategies to boost their earnings from coffee exports.

Amid the need to transform the coffee sector and boost the country's earnings from its coffee resources, Ethiopia has introduced initiatives aimed at promoting private sector engagement in value-addition efforts.

He said that as a value-addition company, Hadero is continuously trying to expand the exports of its processed coffee by improving the standard of its products. "We are sourcing the best green beans from the market. Our packaging, which we import from China, is also unique and helps keep our products fresh and of very good quality," Hamza said.

Ethiopian coffee is recently gaining a foothold in the rapidly expanding Chinese market, registering an annual growth of 27 percent over the past few years, as more and more young people develop a habit of drinking coffee in a country that is dominated by tea culture.

Market size

Over the past two years, China has been importing up to 20,000 metric tons of Ethiopian coffee annually, making it the eighth-largest importer of Ethiopian coffee, up from 33rd place just a few years ago, according to the latest data from the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority.

Adugna Debela, director-general of the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority, told Xinhua News Agency in a recent interview that it attributed the surge in Ethiopia's coffee exports to China to a significant increase in Chinese coffee buyers who import coffee directly from Ethiopia.

Platforms, such as the China International Import Expo and various e-commerce platforms, serve as effective gateways for overseas brands to enter China, providing opportunities that are harnessed by Ethiopian coffee exporters like Hadero.

In January 2019, Hadero was one of three Ethiopian premium coffee brands that sold more than 11,200 bags of coffee within a few seconds at the Ethiopian Coffee Brands Launch on Alibaba's Tmall Global, one of China's largest e-commerce platforms, in a joint initiative with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa as well as the Chinese and Ethiopian governments.

Ahmed said China is now "an emerging and big coffee market" with greater market potential and incentives for Ethiopian coffee exporting companies.

China is now its third-largest export destination for Hadero, which supplies for both domestic and international markets.

"We are closely following the Chinese market," Ahmed said. "China is a big market, and we love to be a part of that."

Xinhua