Amid pandemic, Telangana brews 54% rise in coffee exports

HYDERABAD: Locked inside their homes for more than a year, people across the world are reaching out for a cup of their favourite instant coffee more frequently. Unsurprisingly then, coffee exporters of Telangana have been busier than ever in Covid times. While coffee is not grown in Telangana, exports happen from the state.
During FY21, the state witnessed a 54% rise in coffee exports at $20 million as compared to $13 million in FY20.What is interesting is that Telangana’s coffee exports, though on a smaller base, grew despite a dip in the national coffee exports, revealed global trade finance company Drip Capital Inc in its latest report.

As per the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) data, India exported coffee worth nearly $720 million in FY21 as compared to $739 million in FY20. As of 2020, the global coffee market was valued at around $466 billion.
“One of the reasons for a significant growth in Telangana’s coffee exports can be attributed to the rise in instant coffee exports to West Africa from the state, which jumped from $2 million in FY20 to $6 million in FY21. In general, Telangana exported its instant coffee to a higher number of Western African countries in FY21 than it did in FY20,” a Drip Capital spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, the dip in the national coffee exports happened partly due to Covid-19, wherein in FY20, India’s overall coffee exports sank to a nine-year low in dollar value terms and plummeted by 44% in April 2020.
Moreover, the crisis significantly affected green coffee beans shipments in March 2020, which is the crucial period for Robusta coffee harvesting and exports, he explained. However, even before the pandemic, the Indian coffee industry had been witnessing stagnation for a while due to a growing need for value addition across multiple stages of coffee processing.
As per the report, while environmental changes have been one of the reasons for low and delayed coffee production in India, many other elements, especially on the processing front, can be improved to promote India’s coffee exports.
The report also pointed out that as the intensity of the pandemic grew, the demand for coffee from large restaurants and cafe chains kept declining while that from retailers for home consumption rose.