Brazil’s Coffee Industry Upgrades Open New Space for China-Brazil Cooperation

Xinhua News Agency, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 13 November — Brazil’s coffee industry upgrades open new space for China-Brazil cooperation

By Xinhua reporters Yang Jiahe, Wu Nian and Jin Haoyuan

At the CETEC farm in Itumirim, Minas Gerais state in southeastern Brazil, hulled and screened green coffee beans slide steadily into a Chinese-made colour sorter. The machine reads the colour differences: beans of a similar shade fall into one bag, those that differ into another.

“We used to send our green beans to an outside processing plant and wait 40 to 50 days to learn how many bags we could finally sell,” says farm owner Custodio. With the Chinese equipment, the farm can sort its own beans, know exactly how much of each lot is saleable, and take a more active hand in quality control and delivery schedules.

Brazil is one of the world’s major coffee producers. Data from the National Supply Company (CONAB) show that Brazil’s 2026 coffee crop is forecast at 67.6 million 60-kg bags, up 19.6% year on year and likely a record since the agency began keeping statistics.

Visiting Minas Gerais, Brazil’s main coffee-growing state, Xinhua reporters found that local producers want to raise incomes by improving production and processing technology, lifting quality and opening new markets while keeping their scale advantage. New demand from China is also creating more opportunities for deeper China-Brazil coffee cooperation.

CETEC uses weather-station-assisted drip irrigation, scientific pruning and drying-process monitoring, and improves specialty-coffee quality through small-lot processing and electronic sorting. Its specialty coffee is aimed at international markets and reaches overseas buyers through the farm’s own export channels.

In the municipality of Carmopolis de Minas, the history of the Montuera coffee farm goes back to 1889. Owners Eduardo and Malvina continue a family coffee-growing tradition three generations old, but the way they run the business has changed.

The farm once sold mainly green beans; today it has extended into roasting, packaging and branded sales in search of higher returns from deeper processing. Some trees are shade-grown, so the cherries ripen more slowly and produce coffee with chocolate, caramel and traditional Brazilian sugarcane-sugar notes.

In Varginha, the Coffee Growing Centre of Excellence of the National Rural Training Service helps growers and other coffee professionals raise their skills and returns through grading, roasting, cupping and business-management training. “Specialty coffee is a farm’s shop window,” says centre director Barata: even a limited volume demonstrates the farm’s production standards and helps other products win market recognition.

The 2026 Brazil International Coffee Week opened on 11 November in Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais. One of the world’s largest coffee trade shows, this year’s edition focuses on sustainability, technological innovation and market expansion.

“Separate beans by quality and the best lots can fetch a better price,” Xu Peiming of Anhui Jiexun Optoelectronic Technology told reporters at the show. The company’s colour sorters are already used on Brazilian coffee, rice and soybeans. It has built local sales and after-sales teams, hoping to expand its market while helping growers add value — a win for both sides.

A report released in January by the Brazilian Coffee Exporters Council (Cecafe) shows that Brazil’s total coffee exports fell 20.8% in 2025, while shipments to China rose 19.5% over the same period, making China the tenth-largest destination for Brazilian coffee.

At UCOM Brasil, a coffee warehousing and processing company in Varginha, beans from farms and cooperatives are cleaned, screened and graded to customer specifications before storage and export. General manager Bosi says Asia accounted for about 5% of the company’s export containers roughly five years ago; the figure is now 10–15%, driven largely by growing Chinese demand.

Paiva, chairman of the Varginha agricultural cooperative, is equally bullish on China. The cooperative has more than 9,000 members, sells to 45 countries and exports about 500,000 bags of coffee a year, around 5% of them to China. Chinese consumers are paying growing attention to quality, origin and flavour, creating chances for Brazilian producers to add value.

The changes brought by the Chinese market show up not only in volumes but in buying standards. Ma Chao, a Shanghai-based coffee buyer attending Brazil International Coffee Week for the second year running, says Brazilian beans are consistent in quality, with chocolate and nut notes, and are often used as a blending base in China.

In 2027 it will be 300 years since coffee arrived in Brazil. Today Chinese buyers come to Brazilian growing regions to select beans, and Chinese colour sorters, drones and farm machinery are working on local farms. From choosing a single lot to improving a single process step, China-Brazil coffee cooperation has found a new point of leverage.