Dubai: A state-of-the art facility dedicated to supporting the coffee industry has just been launched in Dubai and it is set to drive new trade flows to the emirate.
Supporting the coffee bean’s journey “from crop to cup,” the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre on Monday inaugurated the “DMCC Coffee Centre,” a 7,500-square-metre temperature-controlled site that is envisioned to become the hub for specialty coffee buyers, traders, roasters and producers.
It is designed to offer a number of services, from warehousing, logistics to green coffee cleaning, roasting and packing, and is capable of handling up to 20,000 tonnes of green coffee, worth around Dh367 million, every year.
A first of its kind in the Middle East, the centre also houses a coffee quality laboratory, cupping labs, commercial office space and a Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Premier Training Campus.
Although it was just launched, the facility has been up and running since November 2018.
UAE residents consume a huge amount of coffee every year. Sales of powdered coffee and coffee beans in the country posted a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 8.4 per cent from 2011 to 2016, equivalent to around Dh2.25 billion in sales, according to Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In the whole Middle East, the industry is expected to climb to Dh16.2 billion by 2021, according to Eurmonitor. The global coffee industry is valued at Dh367.3 billion.
Ahmed Bin Sulayem, executive chairman of DMCC, said the launch of the coffee centre will place Dubai “firmly at the heart of the global coffee trade.”
“First conceptualised in 2016, it is promising to see our vision to serve the market in an entirely different way become a reality,” he said.
Dubai has an advantage over other cities. Sulayem noted that the emirate is strategically located to serve significant emerging markets in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia and it’s also well connected to the coffee-producing regions of Africa, China, India, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
“The DMCC Coffee Centre will connect international coffee traders with sophisticated logistics, and a host of value-added services, providing operational excellence to meet growing global demand,” said Sulayem.
“Until now, the region simply did not have the capacity, equipment or expertise to facilitate global coffee trade on this scale, and we look forward to seeing the impact of our Centre on the industry going forward,” he added.
