Starbucks in RI starts selling Peruvian coffee

Veeramalla Anjaiah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta   

For lovers of high quality international coffee in Indonesia, good news hit town Tuesday, with Starbucks announcing it would sell Peruvian coffee, one of the finest in the world. 

Peruvian Ambassador to Indonesia Juan Alvarez Vita made the announcement as he hosted a group of journalists Tuesday at a coffee tasting session organized by PT Sari Coffee Indonesia, holder of the Starbucks franchise in Indonesia. 

The history of coffee in Peru, Juan said, began in the 16th century and now Peru is the sixth largest coffee producer in the world. 

The country produced 3.9 million 60-kilogram bags in 2007 on 320,000 hectares of land. 

Peru's coffee production has doubled during the last decade and now it is the country's biggest agriculture export earner. 

"We exported US$517.33 million worth of coffee in 2006 to countries like the U.S., Belgium, Switzerland and other European markets," Peruvian Embassy's deputy chief of mission Carlos Javier Castillo Morales told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. 

Bloomberg recently reported Peru's coffee harvest may rise 51 percent to 5.9 million bags in 2008 and earn $550 million in export revenue. 

PT Sari Coffee director Anthony Cottan said, "Though we use Indonesian coffee at Starbucks, our customers also want to taste coffee from abroad." 

Peruvian coffee is high in quality and is produced in an ecologically friendly way, Cottan said, which is what moved Starbucks company to buy it, he said. 

Starbucks started operations in Indonesia in 2002 and has since mushroomed across the archipelago. 

"We have 61 outlets in Indonesia and we will be opening three more next month," PT Sari Coffee Indonesia marketing manager Farah Milda said.