BRASÍLIA: Brazil’s instant coffee industry launched a campaign on Friday to lower tariffs in importing countries with the aim of boosting sales abroad by the world’s largest exporter of soluble coffee by 50 percent over the next decade. The country’s soluble coffee industry association, Abics, and Brazil’s export promotion agency Apex are running the project that will have investments of 1.3 million reais ($380,000). The project will focus on direct trade talks with countries over their tariffs as well as promotional events at Brazilian embassies, representatives of the industry said.
In 2015, Brazil’s soluble coffee industry exported the equivalent of 3.6 million 60-kg bags of green coffee, which represents 10 percent of total coffee exports from Brazil, the world’s largest producer and exporter of the commodity. Green arabica beans make up the bulk of those exports. The project, which will target 22 countries including Turkey, Ukraine, Malaysia, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, will start in 2017.
Tariffs on Brazilian soluble coffee range from 5 percent to 30 percent, Abics said at the 24th Encafe coffee conference this week in Bahia, an up-and-coming coffee producing state in Brazil’s Northeast. Brazil’s soluble coffee industry, which relies on robusta beans to produce instant coffee, is struggling to secure beans after an early 2016 drought that severely hurt output of the variety of coffee in the main producer state of Espirito Santo.
