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SBS Australia
17-05-2025
- Business
- SBS Australia
Inside the move to shake up Australia's $2.5 billion coffee industry
Tibor Pinci with his homegrown coffee beans. Source: SBS / Allan Lee Tibor Pinci is holding a flamethrower at the rotating barrel of a repurposed cement mixer where green coffee beans are slowly turning brown. "We call this an open roaster," Pinci said with a wide grin. "It involves a lot of precision because in just seconds the beans can be overdone." Pinci knows from experience by the sound of the beans popping exactly when to stop. "The coffee it makes will have an incredible full aroma, without the bitterness," he said. Born in then-Yugoslavia, Pinci migrated to Australia in 1981. Initially, he lived in Sydney and worked as a baker among other roles, finally moving north and starting his coffee plantation 18 years ago in the hills above Coffs Harbour. "I bought a nice little place here. It's only one hectare, but I have planted around 3,000 trees now," said Pinci, who is now in his 70s. "I handpick all my cherries when they're beautifully ripe. "The coffee we sell here is completely different to the usual big roasters." Small plantations like Pinci's are multiplying in Australia, as global coffee prices soar. Yet locally grown coffee beans make up just a fraction of Australia's US$1.64 billion ($2.5 billion) coffee market. And that figure is expected to reach US$2.17 billion ($3.35 billion) by 2030. Tobias Kretzschmar, a professor of plant breeding and genetics at the Southern Cross University, said: "We are looking at around 500 tonnes of [Australian coffee bean] production at the moment compared with around 100,000 tonnes of imported green beans." As a result, most of the coffee sold in Australia is brewed from imported beans, mainly Arabica sourced from Brazil. On 22 April, Rabobank predicted a 13.6 per cent drop in Brazil's 2025-2026 coffee crop to 38.1 million bags, citing dry weather in key Arabica-growing areas that significantly reduced flowering. At the same time, rising global financial market volatility — partly fuelled by trade tensions between the United States and China and fears of an economic slowdown — is adding to price instability, compounding the impact of supply-side pressures. Paul Joules, an agriculture research analyst from Rabobank, said: "In April, we did see Arabica prices ease slightly but, nonetheless, on a year-on-year basis, we're still seeing prices around 100 per cent higher." The surge in global coffee prices also adds an incentive for Australian growers to experiment with local production. Scientists at Southern Cross University are trialling a range of coffee trees to determine which varieties have the potential for large-scale local production. "We are part of a big project with World Coffee Research, which is trialling 20 to 30 coffee varieties all around the globe," Kretzschmar said. "So, we piggybacked that global project and we have 25 varieties in Australia so far, coming from around 11 countries: Some are Asian, some African and some South American." To succeed here, coffee trees must be able to thrive to local conditions. "Our aim for Australia is to find new varieties that are better suited for this environment and better suited for the mechanised conditions of coffee farming in Australia," Kretzschmar said. Most coffee crops are grown in Queensland or northern NSW, where warm weather and rain create challenges. "Growers put their money on a variety that's much too vigorous for this environment; it just keeps growing," he said. "Regular pruning means a lot of work. And if the tree is stressed, it won't produce [a coffee crop] the next year. "So, that means the old varieties require a lot of work and suffer yield losses." Could smaller trees be the answer? After five years of trials, Kretzschmar thinks so. "We are looking at semi-dwarf varieties that are more easily machine harvested," he said. "The next stage is to take two or three promising varieties that we believe can outcompete the current varieties and trial them at scale." Scientists are also experimenting with coffee styles to find flavours with mass appeal. For clues, Ben Liu, a researcher from Southern Cross University, turned to a unique taste wheel. "Our coffee character wheel basically helps our panel members describe the taste, the flavour, or mouthfeel," Liu said. "We run a very large coffee panel multiple times. We collect around 6,000 different coffee descriptors from these panel members. "For example, the acidity, the body, the aftertaste. "Based on those characters of the coffee, we can get a better understanding when we're actually tasting coffee." Locally grown coffee offers additional benefits — importing beans from Brazil contributes significantly to the industry's carbon footprint. "You can get your zero-mile coffee in Byron Bay from someone that grows it, ferments it, roasts it and produces it," Kretzschmar said. "This gives you a cup of coffee that was produced within sight of where you're sitting." Coffs Harbour cafe owner Kim Towner uses locally grown produce at her business, Happy Frog Cafe. "I wanted to buy as close to home as I could, and it's just a win-win all around for everybody," she said. "It has been a real passion of mine since I first went into the cafe business. "Growers get paid fairly for it. We know that it hasn't had to travel across the ocean. "And if we can source from our local area, we can make a big difference to how we look after the planet." Pinci is proud to supply to local outlets. "Australian coffee tastes completely different, probably because of the climate which creates a beautiful bean. "And the coffee does not have any bitterness, which is why my customers love it. "That, and of course, the precision roasting with the little flamethrower," he said. Watch now Follow Small Business Secrets Share this with family and friends
SBS Australia
16-05-2025
- General
- SBS Australia
Home-grown coffee is Tibor's passion, precision-roasted by flamethrower
It's one reason local growers are busy planting, as ................ explains. That's the sound of a gas-powered flame thrower firing into a rotating concrete mixer. But it's not concrete that's going round and round - it's coffee beans. Born in Yugoslavia, Hungarian migrant Tibor Pinci has developed his own unique way of roasting green coffee beans at his small plantation in the hills above Coffs Harbour in Northern New South Wales. He knows from the sound of the beans popping exactly when to stop - a few seconds too long, and the batch is spoiled. 'We call it an open roaster. So that one, tumbling it, and of course you go with the flame in there, and that involves a lot of precision, because it can be just overdone or underdone in a few seconds.' There are around 500 coffee growers in Australia, many of them in northern New South Wales and Queensland. As global coffee prices soar, small plantations like Tibor's are multiplying. He describes his as a 'hobby farm', but he's still producing 500 kilograms of roasted coffee a year. A baker by profession, his first attempts at growing coffee plants weren't encouraging when they lived in Sydney. 'So coffee starts growing, comes winter, they die. So it happened about three times before I find out they don't like frost. So in the end, I got about a thousand little seedlings, and I brought it up here to Coffs, because my wife is from Coffs, so my mother-in-law is here. And I said, just look after them, water them once a week, and should be all right. So months later, we came back, and the trees were like a couple of foot tall.' The process is quite laborious. 'I handpick all my cherries when they're beautifully ripe. We dry the cherries as well, because we're making the coffee berry tea out of that one, then the beans get dried and then before I roast, they get hulled it means the white shell comes off to get the green bean and then the green bean can be roasted.' Tibor's customers say they love the full aroma of his coffee with no bitterness. At Southern Cross University in Lismore, researchers are trying to figure that out. Professor Tobias Kretzschmar says coffee growing is not new to Australia 'As far as I'm aware, coffee arrived pretty much with the first fleet and there's been attempts since to establish an industry and it's been thriving in the last 20 to 30 years.' While producers are happy with the quality of the coffee, he says to make the industry more sustainable, they're researching other varieties of coffee bush more suited to Australia. 'The problem they're having is they put their money on a variety that's much too vigorous for this environment. Keeps growing. It's one of the older varieties that's not dwarfing like the new ones, meaning every couple of years the growers will have to prune it. The tree is stressed, won't produce the next year. So a lot of work and yield losses affiliated with the old varieties.' He says a key part of their research is finding out what makes Australian coffee different. That's where his colleague, Dr Ben Liu comes in: 'So we're doing analysis on coffee, trying to understand the flavour and the taste of coffee. At the same time, trying to actually create a chemical fingerprint for our coffee. That means when you have a good cup of coffee or bad cup of coffee, you don't know what's going on there. If you can do a chemical analysis, you know what's in there. So next time you can keep producing a good cup of coffee.' He says coffees grown in Queensland and New South Wales have their own individual flavour characteristics. 'Can be a big difference from farm to farm. Just for example, some of the farms produce coffee. in the far north of Queensland. They produce more traditional coffee flavour, like a cocoa and nutty, those coffee flavour. Here, in the subtropical area in northern New South Wales or southeast Queensland, our coffee tend to actually smell and taste more like fruity and juicy.' At Tibor's farm, nothing is wasted. He sells roasted beans online and at the Sunday morning market in Coffs Harbour. And he makes tea from the dried berries, and flour from the hull of the beans, all full of healthy antioxidants. As for the flavour - Tibor simply knows what his customers like: 'The coffee what we have here is just completely different from the ordinary big roasters, and that probably involves our climate, firstly, that we've got an amazing climate, gives a beautiful bean and of course the precision roasting with the little flame thrower. '
