The Coffee Board was founded in 1942 to provide support to local coffee growers. In 1995, the institution withdrew from marketing operations, once the industry became self-sufficient.

Now it focuses on research, development, quality control and market promotion. It advises the government on matters relating to the industry.

The board also provides diploma courses in coffee quality management and holds the Indian Barista Championship to encourage baristas from across the country.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com / Home> Features> Neighbourhood / June 28th, 2012

The results are in and have recently been published in the Hindu Business Line.

The winner of the Flavour of India Fine Cup Award has been decided.

This is a competition which has been organised by the Coffee Board of India on an annual basis, to promote the production of high-end gourmet quality coffee.

The aim?

To introduce these fine coffees to the international coffee industry.

And the results are in for this year… Who won?

The Pedabayalu Coffee has been awarded the best in region for this year.

The coffee is grown in the Visakhapatnam district in the Araku region.

The judges who made this decision were an international jury and they met in Melbourne in Australia.

It was chosen in the Arabica general category of coffee – the arabica bean, of course, is one of the favourites in coffee circles.

This Visakhapatnam district has some 4,000 hectares of coffee and takes the matter seriously.

There are around 3,000 families who work on these coffee plantations and they are obviously doing a good job.

What happens now?

The coffees which have been decreed as being outstanding, such as Pedabayalu coffee, will be chosen on a national level for ‘final cupping.’

This will take place by an international jury of well-regarded Cup Tasters from around the globe.

Hopefully, the Flavour of Fine Cup Award winner will do well on this occasion too.

Whatever the outcome at the final cupping, the profile of Indian gourmet coffee has been raised.

Posted by Clive on Monday the 28th May 2012

source: http://www.worldcoffeenews.com / by Clive / Monday, May 28th, 2012

SPECIAL FEATURE: GLOBAL INVESTORS MEET

Javed Akhtar, Chairman of Coffee Board

IN the late 1960s and early 1970s, good grade coffee beans and powder were in short supply in India. One could buy them only at specially established coffee depots. There would be long queues at these depots to collect a token to purchase the beans or powder. The beans would be taken home, roasted, ground by manual grinders and then used to produce the best-smelling, best-tasting filter coffee. Today, coffee is in abundance, and there is a wide variety of beans to choose from, thanks to improved methods of cultivation, increased production and the liberalisation of the Indian coffee industry.

The credit for promoting the flavour of coffee must go to the Coffee Board of India. Set up under an Act of Parliament in 1942, the Coffee Board is an autonomous body functioning under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Its main focus is on basic and applied research in coffee, quality upgradation and promotion of coffee in the domestic and international markets. The Coffee Board until 1995 had a pool (controlled) marketing system for coffee. With economic liberalisation, coffee production became a strictly private sector activity. The board’s Central Coffee Research Institute, located in Chikmagalur district in Karnataka, is one of the premier coffee research institutes in the world.

The Coffee Board will, without doubt, be one of the star attractions at GIM 2012, promoting coffee and showcasing its many flavours. On the eve of the GIM, Javed Akhtar, the Coffee Board Chairman, took some time off to speak to Frontline. Excerpts from the interview:

What plans does the board have to promote coffee?

Coffee consumption in the country has been growing at a rate of 5 to 6 per cent a year. At present, coffee consumption is over one lakh tonnes a year. From being a traditional beverage consumed mainly in south India, coffee has become a trendy beverage with a national presence, consumed in several forms. Its strong presence in the domestic market provides many avenues for enterprise development.

What has facilitated this growth in consumption?

The growth of the domestic market has been possible through the promotion of awareness and consumption of pure coffee. This has been done through generic promotional campaigns using mass media and participation in domestic events and festivals. To facilitate entrepreneurial development in the coffee value chain, the Coffee Board has been training people in coffee roasting and brewing. This business vertical is complemented by providing support for setting up roasting units.

The Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia has suggested that tea be declared the national drink.

I am not aware of any drink being declared as the national drink. Anyway, we don’t position coffee as competing with any drink.

How do you plan to attract investors to the coffee industry?

The strong growth in coffee consumption is throwing open opportunities for value addition. The outlook for this sector is much more attractive, given the continuing industry dynamism. The interest in the domestic coffee market can be seen by the high level of investment in the sector with the establishment of a Lavazza unit, the entry of Starbucks [which has a tie-up with Tata Coffee] and the arrival of Dunkin’ Donuts [a United States-based coffee and baked-goods chain]. It is also seen that the existing coffee retailers such as Café Coffee Day, Costa Coffee, Coffee Bean &Tea Leaf, Gloria Jean’s Coffee, Aromas, Au Bon Pain and Testa Rossa are planning to expand their businesses to capitalise on this enthusiasm for coffee. At the same time, small and medium roasting units and stand-alone cafes are also finding their way into niche coffee market development.

Growers complain of a lack of stability in coffee prices.

The price of coffee has never been stable. It depends on demand and supply, the quantity and quality of harvest, the powerful and influential secondary markets in London and New York. Though coffee is grown in developing countries, it is consumed in developed countries, so the state of the economy of these countries goes a long way in determining the price of coffee. What is needed to be provided to the grower is good/adequate returns in capital and labour costs.

Growers complain of a cartelisation of prices by big growers.

There are around 74 or 75 coffee exporters, among whom 10 are big. But there is no cartelisation of prices. There is also no abnormality of prices and it is a free and mature market.

Ravi Sharma

source: http://www.frontline.in / vol.29 , issue. 11 , june 02-15, 2012

Harish Bijoor

And so, Starbucks is here! Well, almost here. The inking of the recent agreement between Starbucks and Tata Global Beverages, and the birth of Tata Starbucks Limited, is an interesting turning point in Indian coffee at large. The entry of Starbucks in India is really the final stamp of globalisation. In many ways, it says that India has arrived, and ready to be delivered. On a platter. With profits to share, sourcing arrangements to capitalise upon, and most certainly profits to repatriate to the mother company as well.

What’s different with the entry of Starbucks in India? After all, Coca Cola was in India for decades, was sent out in 1977, re-entered in 1993. And McDonalds’s unveiled their golden arches in India in 1996. KFC did it noisily in Bangalore in 1995. Why does Starbucks represent more?

Because it is the ultimate representative point of modern retail, which propitiates the “third place syndrome” dominantly. The chain offers, just as any other cafA© chain in the world does, a third place away from home and office, a third place away from school and home. And there are 17,000 plus of these sprinkled across street-corners around the world, making it the most ubiquitous point of retail in the world. Even more ubiquitous than the biggest chain of super-markets of the world.

Just as Coca Cola and McDonald’s, Starbucks represents the capitalist movement of a free world, where eating and drinking are flaunted, touted and branded aggressively at a price and a premium. In many ways these three brands have emerged as the trust-marks of the world. And all three are now in India. Well, nigh nearly there. And, curiously, none of them have needed 100% FDI in retail as a clause to make this happen. And every one of them has aggressive partners. Partners who have and will make money, create local jobs, create local sourcing opportunities and prosperity for all at the end of it.

Starbucks, for many around the world, represents the ultimate climb in the coffee value chain, while many of our Indian companies still struggle at the bottom of the value chain supplying to make the entire enterprise of coffee happen. Look keenly at the coffee value chain. Right at the bottom is the green bean. The coffee-grower sells most of what he grows as green bean. He defines his core-competence to be plantation activity. He defines for himself the tight lines drawn by agricultural practice, planting, nurturing, pruning and plucking. The value realisation for the green bean is therefore the lowest. The pricing is agricultural in its mindset.

Just one rung up in the value chain is the market for the roasted coffee bean. Roast & Ground coffee outlets that offer coffee in this form make more. They invest in a roaster, a grinder and a retail front. The coffee value-add process has begun. This segment is today dominated in south India by as many as 8435 small roasteries in a Dindigul, an Arokkonam and equally in the Holenarsipuras of India.

One rung higher is the terrain occupied by the Roast and Ground filter coffee marketers of this country. This space is dominated by the small and the big. As much as 62,000 tonnes of the coffee we produce in India is used up by the likes of HUL and Tata Coffee in the organised segment, and by a whole host of smaller players with a solid base of local brand equity such as Narasu’s and Leo’s in Tamil Nadu and Cothas in Karnataka.

As we climb higher in the value-chain of coffee, we discover instant coffee. The dominant brands of Nescafe and Bru are growing at a frenetic 18% per annum as the country discovers the joy of convenience coffee that doesn’t take ages to prepare with cumbersome devices such as the coffee filter and percolator.

Thus far the value chain of coffee has been of a solid avatar. Time to move the chain over to the liquid avatar. Out here are the vending machines that dispense coffee, the home and office coffee-maker and more.

In many ways the future is liquid, and not solid. Liquid coffee has this exciting habit of delivering bigger margins and bigger degrees of made-to-order satisfaction to consumers alike. And that’s a combination no one will ignore. Liquid coffee, through vending machines for outdoor locations, and home coffee makers for in-home and in-office locations, make coffee climb the value chain higher.

And that’s not the end of the coffee value chain journey. The sit-down and take-away cafes represent the ultimate peak in this value chain. Here, a coffee you could make at home for 2.60 per cup (with foam and froth and all), will cost you 50 or 100 or, in the future, even 150, if you will. The entry of Starbucks in many ways creates a caste system in the cafA© chains within India at large. You will have coffee that will come at 1$ a cup (CafA© Coffee Day), $2 a cup (Costa Coffee) and maybe at $3 a cup (Starbucks?).

With the entry of Starbucks in India, the coffee-value chain has touched the peak it has always wanted to. But never got to.

(The author is the Ex-VP, Tata Coffee Limited and ex-member of the Coffee Board of India)

source: http://www.economictimes.indiatimes.com / THE ECONOMIC TIMES / Home> Opinion> Guest Writer / February 04th, 2012