Coffee farmers miss out on UK coffee shop boom

LONDON – British coffee chains are booming with sales seen at 1,4 billion pounds ($2.48 billion) by 2008 but it’s not going to drastically change the economic conditions of third world coffee farmers, experts said on Wednesday.

Sales for UK coffee chains topped one billion pounds for the first time in 2005 and are set to grow 8.9 percent a year as brands like Starbucks Corp. The survey was limited to the British market.Half of the industry’s 1,1 billion-pound turnover in 2005 came from coffee, the report said.But British consumers drinking more cappuccinos does not resolve the problem of cyclical oversupply that has plagued the coffee market and gave rise to a crisis earlier this decade when world coffee prices plunged to 30-year lows.”The new coffee bar culture is positive for the image of coffee in general,” said the International Coffee Organisation’s head of operations Pablo Dubois.”It certainly helps consumption to an extent but perhaps not as much as people think.This is because a lot of what they are consuming is largely milk.”Lattes and cappuccinos were voted the most popular coffee drinks in Allegra’s survey.The UK, a nation of tea lovers, has the lowest per capita consumption rate out of all the major coffee-importing countries, according to the ICO, which represents consumers and producers.The London-based ICO put UK consumption at 2,4 kg per head in 2004, up almost nine per cent since 2001 but still half what the French and Italians consume and way below the coffee-guzzling Finns.They downed 11,94 kg per capita in 2004.Still, coffee experts said the coffee shop boom had helped create a new generation of consumers and raised the profile of the beans’ origins.”It is having a knock-on effect.It is affecting tea drinking and younger consumers are being exposed to coffee,” said Allegra’s managing director Jeffrey Young.”Coffee is also better quality than it ever was but it is not growing volumes significantly.”The ICO’s Dubois said the British still had a long way to go to catch up with connoisseurs in countries like Japan, the largest market for luxury coffees like Jamaican Blue Mountain.”In Japan there is consumer demand to know what origins go into what blends,” he said.”This tendency is growing but is still quite small.There is increasing awareness of origins and differential types of coffee but it’s a slow educational process.”- Nampa-ReutersThe survey was limited to the British market.Half of the industry’s 1,1 billion-pound turnover in 2005 came from coffee, the report said.But British consumers drinking more cappuccinos does not resolve the problem of cyclical oversupply that has plagued the coffee market and gave rise to a crisis earlier this decade when world coffee prices plunged to 30-year lows.”The new coffee bar culture is positive for the image of coffee in general,” said the International Coffee Organisation’s head of operations Pablo Dubois.”It certainly helps consumption to an extent but perhaps not as much as people think.This is because a lot of what they are consuming is largely milk.”Lattes and cappuccinos were voted the most popular coffee drinks in Allegra’s survey.The UK, a nation of tea lovers, has the lowest per capita consumption rate out of all the major coffee-importing countries, according to the ICO, which represents consumers and producers.The London-based ICO put UK consumption at 2,4 kg per head in 2004, up almost nine per cent since 2001 but still half what the French and Italians consume and way below the coffee-guzzling Finns.They downed 11,94 kg per capita in 2004.Still, coffee experts said the coffee shop boom had helped create a new generation of consumers and raised the profile of the beans’ origins.”It is having a knock-on effect.It is affecting tea drinking and younger consumers are being exposed to coffee,” said Allegra’s managing director Jeffrey Young.”Coffee is also better quality than it ever was but it is not growing volumes significantly.”The ICO’s Dubois said the British still had a long way to go to catch up with connoisseurs in countries like Japan, the largest market for luxury coffees like Jamaican Blue Mountain.”In Japan there is consumer demand to know what origins go into what blends,” he said.”This tendency is growing but is still quite small.There is increasing awareness of origins and differential types of coffee but it’s a slow educational process.”- Nampa-Reuters