Myanmar coffee industry reborn with ‘premium’ appeal
Myanmar is making waves in the coffee world, thanks to a climate and topography that lend themselves to coffee growing and new technology from abroad that has improved the quality of its beans.
This has brought Myanmar recognition as a producer of high-grade, “specialty” coffees with unique flavours.
In early February, 35 members of the All Japan Coffee Roasters Association visited a processing plant in Pyin Oo Lwin (formerly known as Maymo), a highland village 1,100 metres above sea level about 70 kilometres east of the central city of Mandalay. The visit was led by Yutaka Shibata, the president of Key Coffee.
Mandalay Coffee Group, founded in 2014, runs the plant. It has two functions, one of which is to process the beans. It collects coffee cherries from farmers in the area and neighbouring Shan state. The red fruit is stripped of its pulp — a layer just beneath the outer skin that encases the bean — dried and milled. Various steps in processing create flavours unique to each type of bean.
The other function is to evaluate the quality of the beans. With the help of experts from the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), the company has developed ways to process coffee cherries from each farm separately and to classify them.
One method is “cupping”, evaluating the aroma and flavour of brewed coffee under set conditions, a bit like a wine taster does with wine. During the visit by the Japanese group, one participant tasted several coffees, describing their flavours with phrases such as “a waft of sweetness like chocolate or nuts”, and “bright acidity similar to apple or lemon”.
Once standards were in place, quality began to improve. In 2016, Myanmar produced its first coffee variety to exceed 80 points on the SCAA cupping scale and was designated a “specialty coffee”.
Myanmar has a long history as a coffee producer, growing both high- and lowgrade beans, according to Amy VanNocker, an SCAA expert who is working with Mandalay Coffee Group. By putting in place clear evaluation criteria, selection of beans has become stricter and quality has improved quickly, she said.
In richer consuming countries, there is growing interest in premium “third wave” coffees brewed to bring out the unique characteristics of the beans. And demand for coffee grown in exotic locales is rising. Myanmar beans have caught the eye of coffee companies in North America, Europe and Japan.
Just a few years ago, almost no one considered Myanmar a serious coffee-growing country. But that is changing: “I got a strong impression that [Mandalay Coffee Group] was introducing new methods one after another, to try to catch up with the world” Shibata said after touring the plant.
As demand has risen, so has the price of beans from Myanmar. According to a local newspaper, the price of beans for export has more than doubled from two years ago to a range between US$3,000 and $7,000 per tonne depending on quality.
But production in Myanmar is still dwarfed by that of its neighbours. In fiscal 2016, it produced 8,500 tonnes, compared with 1.7 million in Vietnam and 650,000 in Indonesia, according to Myanmar government data.
The government hopes to increase the amount of land under coffee cultivation to 80,000 hectares by 2030, up from 12,000 hectares today, turning coffee into a major export.
Coffee bean output has been increasing globally, particularly in Southeast Asia. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), worldwide production grew 13% between 2006 and 2016, to 9.22 million tonnes.
In Southeast Asia, production expanded nearly twice as fast, rising 25% during the same period, to 2.36 million tonnes in 2016, thanks to rapidly growing markets such as China. The region now accounts for a quarter of global output and it grows twice as much as Africa, where coffee is thought to have originated.
Vietnam is a rising star. Its production has risen by a factor of 58 in the last 30 years. The country overtook Indonesia and the Philippines in the 1990s and is now the world’s second-largest producer, after Brazil. Laos is also gaining ground, more than doubling production to 140,000 tonnes compared with five years ago.
Though specialty coffees from Myanmar are increasingly drawing attention, “output is way too small” for big coffee companies to use in their blends and other products, said Shibata of Key Coffee.
The problem is productivity. According to the FAO, output per hectare in Myanmar is only around 26% that of Vietnam. However, the country has a vast amount of highland terrain suitable for coffee farming. With better technology from overseas, the coffee industry could flourish.