India, Russia, China getting hooked to coffee

India, Russia and China, traditionaly considered to be tea lovers, but the coming generation is going coffee way.

Coffee consumption in India, Russia and China, traditionally considered to be tea lovers, was going up with the younger generation getting hooked to the beverage, a top official of Tata Tea Ltd said on Thursday.

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While in India, the consumption of coffee has jumped from 60,000 tonnes about one and half years ago to the present 70,000 tonnes, Russians, especially the youngsters were preferring coffee to tea, according to Hamid Ashraff, Managing Director, Tata Tea Ltd (TCL), the largest Coffee Plantation company in Asia.

Coffee consumption in Russia was growing at the rate of 15 per cent year-by-year, Ashraff said. About 5,000 tonnes of instant coffee was sold in Russia last year, he said.

China is also slowly shifting to coffee like India and Russia, he claimed.

Tata coffee, India's second largest exporter of instant coffee, sends the product also to countries in Europe, Asia and North America.

Ashraff said instant coffee exports of the company had grown rapidly over the last few years with export volumes, turnover and profits increasing by almost 50 per cent every year. TCL has 2 instant coffee plants - at Toopran near Hyderabad and in Theni near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, he said.

TCL owns over 20,000 acres across 26 estates in Coorg, Hassan and Chickmagalur districts in Karnataka and produces about 10,000 tonnes of coffee annually in its own estates.

Tata coffee has recently acquired over 12,000 acres of tea and coffee estates in Annamalais region. Four tea estates and one coffee estate in Tamil Nadu and a tea estate in Kerala from Tata Tea and produces 8 million kgs of tea annually.