Investment agency sees potential in PH coffee for Seattle market
Rebecca Lovell, chief operating officer of the Greater Seattle Partners, a public-private partnership firm promoting investments and trade in the greater Seattle region, said the Filipinos' and the city's 'shared love for coffee' could pave the way for more active collaboration with local Filipino coffee producers.
'The cultural connections run deep,' Lovell told selected journalists from the Philippines and Japan on a reporting tour of the United States funded by the State Department.
'I'd love to explore more on how we can make connections around coffee.'
Home to many coffee enthusiasts and the birthplace of the world's largest coffee shop chain, Starbucks, Seattle has an abundance of diverse and independent coffee houses across the city.
Lovell said while the majority of Filipino-American-owned businesses, mostly in the food industry, over the years have significantly contributed to Seattle's 'traditional' economy, she also hopes to see greater penetration of Philippine coffee in the city in the future.
'There are some really, really incredible Filipino businesses here, and you see some of the richness of the food tradition. That's where, candidly, we would start to see more of a traditional economic impact,' Lovell said.
Philippine trade officials in embassies in the US and Japan said in previous interviews that Arabica, a coffee variety that the Philippines produces from its highlands, including in the Sagada mountain municipality and Benguet province in the north and Mount Apo in the south, has been in demand, as well as the Barako coffee, a Liberica type of bean consumed locally and produced in Batangas and Cavite.
However, they said that in order to meet the increasing demand, more plantations in the Philippines must be devoted to these types of coffee.
Discussions with US and Japanese officials are ongoing to determine how various Philippine agricultural products, including coffee, can enter their market, they said.
In terms of trade and investment, Lovell said the Philippines is Seattle's 17th trading partner, 14th in imports and 21st in exports.
Seattle, which is fast becoming America's tech and aerospace hub, also has the ninth largest population of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans among cities in the US, according to Pew Research Center, with over 100,000. —VBL, GMA Integrated News
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