The future of Hawaiʻi's largest coffee farm remains uncertain.
Kauaʻi Coffee Company is facing an expiring lease and a complicated business structure.
Meanwhile, pressures of a different kind are hitting one export market for Hawaiian coffee: South Korea.
This is an increasingly expensive time to be a coffee drinker pretty much anywhere — but especially in South Korea.
Inflation has raised the price of coffee beans for customers around the world for three years in a row now.
But in South Korea, that’s been complicated by a falling currency.
The Joong Ang Daily reports several chain stores have already raised prices this year.
This is not a small matter — The New York Times quotes government figures showing the number of coffee shops across South Korea has doubled in the past six years, to some 80,000.
There is a small shot of a Hawaiʻi story in all of this.
While the overall export market for Hawaiʻi coffee has dropped in recent years, South Korea remains in the top five destinations for Hawaiʻi beans.
According to the latest available export numbers from the federal government, Japan tops the market list for Hawaiʻi coffee, followed by Canada, France and then South Korea.
But other Asian export business may be brewing.
A report just last week from the Foreign Agricultural Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the coffee market in China is continuing to grow at about 15% a year, now to about $42 billion.
And that makes China one of the fastest-growing coffee markets in the world.
