With the successful staging of Davao Region’s Philippine Coffee Expo 2023 in Manila on June 2-5, a group of Japanese businessmen is exploring the possibility of importing Davao del Sur coffee beans into their country. This was bared in an interview Tuesday by Cherrilyn Lycah Baylon, the enterprise development and marketing specialist of the Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rural Development Project (DA-PRDP) Project Support Office in Mindanao. Baylon said Masatsugu Fujimoto and Shigeru Chiba, the president and the executive manager, respectively, of Aj-Sewing LCC based in Tokyo, Japan, came to the region Monday to visit coffee farms of PRDP-assisted beneficiaries in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur. The two visited the Tibolo Farm Workers Association (TIFWA) in Sta. Cruz town and were impressed with the distinct sweetness of TIFWA’s arabica coffee, which they said should be classified as specialty coffee eligible for a premium price due to its unique flavor profile, according to Baylon. ‘To meet the minimum annual supply requirement of 100 metric tons, Jeciry and Rey Antik, TIFWA marketing manager and president respectively, will call for a meeting with the Davao del Sur coffee council on June 23 to secure the volume of green coffee beans required by the Japanese group,’ Baylon said. The challenge for TIFWA is to meet the demand of supplying 100 metric tons, and the need to submit samples to test if it will pass the quality standards of the Japanese group. Baylon noted that TIFWA is set to send initial samples of their green coffee beans to Japan by September after the coffee harvest season. ‘This will also allow time to perfect their coffee process with the expected arrival and installation of PRDP’s PHP12.5 million coffee post-harvest facility with solar dryer, which is part of their interventions for the ‘Green Coffee Beans Processing and Marketing’ enterprise subproject,’ she said. In anticipation of the market-link up, Fujimoto and Chiba asked for the production schedules of PRDP’s other arabica-producing groups in Bukidnon, South Cotabato and Maguindanao to explore similar arrangements in the future.
Source: Philippines News Agency
