Korea imported a record amount of coffee last year with a Korean adult drinking more than 300 cups of coffee a year on average, the Korea Customs Service (KCS) recently said. The country with a coffee shop on nearly every corner imported 117,000 tons of coffee worth $416 million in 2010 ― up from 105,000 tons worth $311 million brought in the previous year.
Korea imported a record amount of coffee last year with a Korean adult drinking more than 300 cups of coffee a year on average, the Korea Customs Service (KCS) said Monday.
The country with a coffee shop on nearly every corner imported 117,000 tons of coffee worth $416 million in 2010 ― up from 105,000 tons worth $311 million brought in the previous year.
The number of cups of coffee drank by an adult in a year went up from 248 cups in 2007 to 291 in 2008, 283 in 2009 and 312 in 2010.
Not only do Koreans drink more, but they also increasingly prefer expensive, high-quality coffee.
Imports of the relatively cheap green coffee beans from Vietnam dropped 8.6 percent from a year earlier while imports of expensive Columbian beans shot up 47 percent, the customs agency said. Green coffee beans are raw and unroasted.
Columbia is now the biggest exporter of unroasted beans to Korea, which cost $4.6 per kilogram, compared to Vietnam’s $1.5 per kilogram.
The U.S. is the largest exporter of roasted coffee beans that cost $10.7 per kilogram. The KCS says that 10 grams of American-grown coffee beans costs 123 won before tax, indicating most Americanos served at coffee shops have a very low production cost.
A cup of Americano is priced at 3,600 won in Starbucks, 4,000 won at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, 3,800 won in Caffe Bene and 3,300 won in Angel-in-us Coffee.
High-quality roasted-beans from Switzerland carry a price tag of a whopping $28.3 per kilogram ― compared to $13.2 from Italy and $9.1 from Japan ― but imports of those beans soared 28.3 percent last year, making Switzerland the third-largest exporter of roasted beans.
The customs agency said that with the increase of coffee shops, local coffee drinkers are rapidly switching to roasted coffee beans from instant coffee or coffee powder.
Such the trend also boosted the sales of espresso machines ― imports of the appliances grew four times from $7.5 million in 2005 to $32.8 million in 2010.
While demand for instant coffee is shrinking at home, Korea remains a large exporter of coffee powder. The customs agency said that Korea exported instant coffee worth $130 million last year mainly to China, Russia, Israel, Australia and Japan.
“We need to diversity our exports of coffee which mainly consist of instant coffee. We should encourage domestic coffee makers to expand to overseas market and develop roasting skills to produce high-quality roasted beans,” the agency said.