Breakthrough: Menglian Specialty Green Beans Exported to South Korea for the First Time via Self-Declaration

Recently, a batch of arabica green coffee beans produced in Menglian Dai-Lahu-Va Autonomous County, Pu’er, cleared customs and was exported to South Korea, totaling 5.62 tonnes. This is the first time a local Menglian coffee enterprise has independently opened up the South Korean market.

The exported goods are standardized, hulled, sorted, dried and packaged specialty arabica green beans, traded under the general-trade model, including both full-container bulk orders and supporting trial shipments.

According to reports, in response to the enterprise’s first self-export demand, Menglian Customs and Simao Customs provided proactive, front-loaded services, guiding the enterprise one-on-one to complete pre-work such as origin registration, quality-system standardization, export-qualification sorting and certificate-of-origin issuance. After local registration was completed, the goods were cleared and released at Shekou Customs and Sungang Customs in turn, achieving efficient cross-district customs clearance.

“Based on our customs functions, we make good use of the resident-Pu’er customs collaboration mechanism, focusing on Menglian’s distinctive advantageous industries such as coffee and avocado, implementing precise one-enterprise-one-policy services, and proactively guiding enterprises to standardize the processes of origin registration, inspection declaration and certificate-of-origin application, effectively solving the problems of small agricultural enterprises’ lack of self-export experience, incomplete qualifications and unfamiliarity with procedures. Next, we will continue to optimize clearance services and fully escort more of Menglian’s quality agricultural products to go abroad and to the world,” said Zhang Minyun, an officer of the Comprehensive Business Section of Menglian Customs.

Menglian is an important specialty coffee producing area in Pu’er. The county has a coffee planting area of 120,100 mu; in the 2025/2026 season its coffee specialty rate reached 73%, ranking first in the province for four consecutive years. In recent years, the locality has included coffee among the five distinctive industries of “sugar, rubber, cattle, coffee and tea” for key cultivation, promoted standardized planting and primary-processing upgrading, and fostered local foreign-trade operators.

For a long time, Menglian coffee has been of excellent quality with a broad export market, but most products relied on intermediaries for resale and export, and local enterprises were weak in independent order-taking, self-declaration and self-export. The export of Menglian Qiao’an Coffee Trading Co.’s beans to South Korea via a fully self-declared process is an important breakthrough in Menglian coffee industry’s transformation from “quality leadership” to “market-opening leadership.”

“The successful export to South Korea is inseparable from the policy guidance of Menglian Customs and Simao Customs, and is an important step for the enterprise to deepen its overseas market. Next, the enterprise will continue to strictly control product quality and constantly expand its international customer base, driving stable income growth for surrounding coffee farmers,” said Jin Tao, head of Menglian Qiao’an Coffee Trading Co.

“Menglian coffee’s quality, output and specialty rate have long ranked at the forefront of the province, with a broad export market, but in the past most of it relied on intermediaries for export, and local enterprises’ capacity for independent overseas expansion was insufficient. This enterprise’s successful self-export to South Korea has filled the gap in our county’s agricultural products’ independent export, and its demonstration effect is significant. Next, we will continue to cultivate local foreign-trade entities, guide more agricultural enterprises to build their own international sales channels, and promote the industry’s upgrade from ‘product going overseas’ to ‘enterprise going overseas and brand going overseas,’ fully activating the new momentum of the distinctive industries’ export-oriented development,” introduced Chen Mei, deputy director of the Menglian County Tea and Specialty Biological Industry Development Center.

Next, Menglian County will continue to deepen the customs-local and government-enterprise linkage, strengthen local export-oriented agricultural entities, extend the coffee deep-processing chain, broaden diversified international markets, consolidate its leading position in provincial specialty coffee, and polish the golden brand of “China’s No.1 County for Specialty Coffee.”

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