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HERE’S our astonishment: Sabahans devour 230 million cups of coffee yearly, brewed from 1,000 tonnes of coffee beans imported mostly from Indonesia, says Yap Cheen Boon, Team leader of the Sabah International Festival at Suria Sabah on Sept 26-Oct 2. “The economic value is staggering,” Yap believes. “Here you have 1000 tons of beans upstream, downstream is 230 million cups, the economic value easily hits the billion ringgit mark and we are not capitalising on every single tier of this this chain,” Yap regrets.

But precisely, he has been trying to whip up the coffee economics for five years with like-minded business friends.

Starting with a relatively obscure Borneo Coffee Festival, 2022 raised its 5th year profile to Sabah International Coffee Festival, under the banner of City Hall’s ‘Love Vibrant KK’ programme.

So I asked Yap what this transition means. 

Eyeing a large trickle down effect  

“We believe this is the right direction because if you look all across the world you see some events actually started from a city level with a trickle down effect that eventually benefited a larger zone,” Yap said, citing Hawaii’s Kona Coffee Cultural Festival.

A few airlines and hoteliers started it in low tourism November 1970 in a village but today the Kona Coffee Festival draws throngs of coffee buffs and traders from all over the US every year. “It’s the same with the Melbourne Coffee Festival which is now spreading to the whole of Australia. Then you have the George Town Festival which now delivers a lot of benefits for the whole town of Penang. So here you start from Love Vibrant KK which is KK specific but eventually who knows everybody in the whole State will benefit,” Yap visualised.       That’s one for the future. But digging back to four years of Borneo Coffee Festival inaugurated in 2016, how had that help the coffee industry?

Coffee festival impacts on the Kopi-O culture 

“As we all know, Malaysia’s coffee culture is dominated by two drinks – our local coffee called Kopi O and Instant 3-in-1 white coffee. The Borneo Coffee Festival actually served two purposes. One, to educate the public about what other types of coffee that’s out there besides Kopi O. Two, like a picture tells a thousand words – to show it because people don’t really get it if you just talk,” Yap articulated.

Next question: Did four years of Borneo Coffee Festival make any difference?

“Yes, yes,” Yap was emphatic. “Number One, a proliferation of cafes, higher standard, not just within Kota Kinabalu but the whole state, these appeal to and motivate more and more young people coming into work, starting their own businesses to carve out a niche for themselves,” Yap noted “Number Two, it also spurs the existing coffee players of the Kopi-O or the Instant 3-in-1 to improve themselves so it elevates.”

Calling coffee planters: More money from better quality beans 

“Now, what we hope to achieve eventually is a trickle down effect to encourage coffee planters – the farmers to come out with better beans,” Yap hopes.

“What we have seen since three years ago is more and more farmers going into what we call higher standard niche farming of coffee, we are seeing is actually elevation from upstream to downstream. That’s what we are seeing, we have actually got examples of these,” Yap asserted.

But most beans are imported from Indonesia. “Not that we don’t have farmers, it’s farmers not getting the remuneration they need but to get more money, they have to elevate the standard of the beans, come out with better quality beans and you get more money. How to plant, use of fertilisers, when to harvest, all play a very big part so this event hopes to inculcate in them.”   “Coffee can sell a few times more even at the farmer’s level,” Yap asserted.

More value-added from way of planting coffee

“A good example is Honduras coffee brought into the Expo by a KL coffee businessman - you smell its intense powerful scent and typical fruity flavour, they get more value added out of the way they plant it, harvest and process it.

“These are the upstream farmers only making the money, we have not yet reached the middle roaster level who get more money unleashing its aromatic roast flavour, so every level is able to value add,” Yap highlighted certain standards that can add value. 

Taiwan’s skilful boutique coffee farms rank top   

“Look at Taiwan’s 33 boutique farms each about 10 acres, small but they always rank top 2, top 3 or top 4 at the world level so not just the farms benefit but also the factories, cafes.” Fit the bill for food security?

“I won’t say it’s food security, we are talking about upstream and downstream, about farmers learning the tricks – the skills and get more value out of it,” Yap explained. “This is why Sedia is supporting us strongly because they are really into training skills.” 

High value from the middle and tertiary tiers

“In the middle tier is what you call the roasters, the factory people, they can add value to it. Then you have the tier which is the end product which some of our entrepreneurs are selling – the coffee related products. At the tertiary service level is the Café which actually has more economic value. So you see the multiplication of economic benefits out of it is tremendous,” Yap dissects the coffee industry which clearly has room for building up local production of coffee, add value to it like jobs and incomes. “As you can see, there are so many tiers in the coffee industry – the farm tier, the middle tier, the tertiary service tier – all got economic value, any tier can pull the whole value chain up,” Yap pointed out.     

Go beyond borders for more economic inflows

“That’s why we got Shopee Malaysia because Shopee can go beyond borders – online, we are trying to seek more economic inflow because all this is about economic growth, otherwise you are limited to the State, you can’t do much,” Yap looked at the big picture.   Yap reiterated: “Sabahans drink a lot of coffee – 230 million cups a year, imagine the economic value. If you can sell at RM10 per cup, it hits billion. Many other countries internationally can reach the high level because they are able to squeeze every cent out of it but we haven’t done it yet.”