Salvadoran coffee producer banking on CIIE to boost sales in China

Salvadoran coffee producer Ernesto Aguilar is banking on this year's China International Import Expo (CIIE) to increase his sales in the Chinese market. 

"We have very high expectations," the president of the family-owned company Nedecaza, told Xinhua, referring to the expo, which opened Tuesday in Shanghai and will last through Sunday. 

Aguilar began to sell coffee to China after making two business deals at the first ever China import expo last year. He hopes to return home from the 2nd edition of the CIIE this year with more orders. 

"We're going to visit our first two clients, and we hope to meet and bring in more clients to be able to help all our small producers," Aguilar said. 

Nedecaza, located in the western municipality of Santa Tecla, has been in the coffee business for 40 years. It has now three coffee plantations and two processing plants.

In El Salvador in Central America, the star product coffee supports an industry which directly employs around 100,000 people. 

According to Aguilar, a market research made at the CIIE 2018 identified a market for El Salvador's premium coffees which are grown in mountains more than 1,200 meters above the sea level. 

China is a huge potential market for the Salvadoran coffee, given its population of nearly 1.4 billion people in addition to continued expansion in the number of young consumers seeking high-quality coffee.

"That's where El Salvador's opportunities lie, to introduce gourmet coffee to meet the demands of the younger market, which in China is growing day by day," said Aguilar. 

"There's our opportunity to bring in better quality products ... better flavors, better aromas," he added. 

Cafes are springing up in Chinese cities, offering coffees from around the world, he said, and while young consumers represent a relatively small segment of the Chinese market, it is still very large to a small country like El Salvador. 

"It's a market that I call infinite," he said.