Alejandro Mojica,
PCBI director and former head of the National Coffee Research Institute at Cavite State University.
The
PCBI chief said there is growing demand in Asia-Pacific markets, such as Japan, Korea, Singapore, Australia and Thailand for Robusta and Arabica coffee varieties coming from the Philippines.
"In some supermarkets, they are beside each other and the price differential is very small," observed one director of
PCBI.
PCBI founding trustee Guillermo Luz said Filipino consumption of coffee be it roast, ground, instant or specialty has been rising significantly year after year.
PCBI's Guillermo Luz said the Philippines was one of the few countries in the world that produced all four coffee varieties -liberica, arabica, robusta and excelsa.
Also exacerbated by climate change and other factors like drought and typhoons or other extreme weather conditions," Matti said as he cited the
PCBI's efforts to visit all the corn producing regions in the country to educate coffee farmers the proper way to harvest and process coffee to ensure better prices.
'There is a big market for specialty coffee in Korea and Japan,' says Robert Francisco,
PCBI director and certified Q grader, or an expert in scoring coffee based on a standard assessment developed by the US-based Coffee Quality Institute (CQI).
The bank said that it has agreed to buy 17 banking centres of Peoples Community Bancorp, Inc (
PCBI.O) for about USD12m.
The KP competition is part of
PCBI's quest to upgrade the Philippines' coffee industry standards, as they continue to build the country's own 'army' of coffee graders and cuppers, a project which began last year in collaboration with the CQI.
(
PCBI) hopes to have for the country by 2018, to help build a stronger coffee industry and create high-quality products that can compete in the international market.