Out with opium, in with coffee as Myanmar targets speciality market
- With help from aid groups, Myanmar is turning itself into a speciality coffee producer looking for a niche in the global market
- But after the Rohingya tragedy, focusing domestically looks the better play
Myanmese entrepreneur Ngwe Tun plans to send a shipment of expensive Geisha coffee to Hong Kong in April next year, notching up another first for the country’s fledgling “speciality” coffee industry.
Ngwe Tun, 43, founder and director of Aung Nay Lin Htun – which has been producing coffee under the Genius brand since 2012 – started importing Geisha coffee trees from Panama four years ago.
The first crop of the speciality beans should be ready for harvest in Ywa Ngan township, in Myanmar’s eastern Shan State, later this month, and should yield around 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds).
“Arabica Geisha is among the most expensive coffees in the world,” Ngwe Tun says. “A lot of buyers in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan are excited about the product, as it was not available from Asia before.”
Geisha, a variety of the world’s dominant arabica coffee species, originated in Gesha, Ethiopia – no one seems to know where the “Geisha” misnomer originated. It was transplanted in Panama in the 1960s, where it was successfully cultivated. It remained relatively obscure for decades until 2004, when it won first place in a Best of Panama coffee competition. This year, a batch of Geisha coffee sold for US$803 per pound (US$364 per kilogram), making it the most expensive coffee in the world.
Ngwe Tun is hoping to reap a more modest US$20 to US$25 per kilogram for his own Geisha grown by Shan farmers, who he says will get a good percentage of the sales price.
