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Daniel Robles of Descamex in Mexico is inspecting beans for final quality control before shipping decaf coffee to clients in Spain where growth in decaf coffee is particularly strong. Photo by Maja Wallengren
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The decaf coffee market continues to boom and in Spain improved quality along with innovative campaigns for consumer branding have been leading the growth curve. Photo by Maja Wallengren
The coffee market in Spain is quickly becoming the world’s biggest coffee market for decaffeinated beans with about 20% of the overall coffee consumption now being filled by decaf brands, according to industry leaders and new market data. From an overall focus on ecological and organic food products combined with lifestyle choices from late dinner times to overall health and wellness, the coffee industry channeled consumer growth to higher levels by using decaf brands to build higher market share.
“The market in Spain is where we continue to see what has been surprising growth for decaffeinated coffee and it continues to be a case very different, and with a fascinating kind of consumer interest compared to other markets,” said Daniel Robles, export vice-president at Descamex, a world-leading leading supplier of decaffeinated products based Mexico.
“People in Spain are accustomed to go out for dinner late and therefore as the coffee market has been growing the caffeine issue has gathered more attention, to the point when consumers ask for coffee it’s become standard practice for baristas or waiters to ask whether they want a regular coffee or decaf,” Robles told STiR coffee and tea in an interview during a recent visit to Descamex headquarters in Cordova, Veracruz, Mexico. Making the offer in choice of either regular or decaf coffee a natural part of the ordering process gives consumers the option to consider the health benefits of drinking decaf in the evening, even if many of these consumers drink regular coffee earlier in the day, he added.
The coffee market in Spain experienced healthy industry development at the time the global financial debt-crisis hit the Eurozone in 2009, resulting in consumption decline of 9.6% to 3.1 million 60-kilogram bags in 2011 from 3.5 million bags in 2008, according to figures from the International Coffee Organization (ICO). But the demand for decaffeinated coffee was already on the rise, growing to a17% market share in 2009 to about 20% today, market data from multiple research reports show.
As for the overall global trends in the decaf segment of the industry, it’s the health factor and consumer desire to develop more natural food habits that is leading the motivation for further growth in the Spanish market for deaf beans.
In 2020 coffee consumption at home increased 13.9% to 1.98 kilograms per capita in this market of 47 million people, a growth rate significantly above that of overall food and beverage products that rose 11.2% in 2020 compared to 2019, said Spain’s Agriculture Ministry in its “2020 Food Consumption Study for Spain,” a copy of which was reviewed by STiR.
“Roasted and decaffeinated coffee [demand] has increased above that of the rest of the sector for this category in the last year,” said the Spanish Agriculture Ministry study released in May 2021. About half of the average coffee consumer in Spain is taken at home while the other half is enjoyed outside the home, typically in social settings where the culture of drinking coffee together is central to the consumption at all times of the day.
During the last 10 years overall per capita coffee consumption in Spain expanded 27.8% from 2010-2020, the study said, detailing this growth was “particularly motivated by the purchase of natural coffee” segment of the industry. The “natural coffee” segment includes organic, ecological, and decaffeinated coffee and accounted for 60% of the growth in overall coffee consumption in the 2010-2020 period, said the study.
In a part of the Mediterranean market where the traditional coffee consumer is “not that enthusiastic for decaffeinated coffee” the Spanish consumer stands out as an exemption, said Italy’s Max Fabian, president of the Demus Spa coffee decaffeinating plant located in the northern Italian city of Trieste. “You have a very good growth for decaf in Spain, maybe in part because of an aging population, but I also believe because of decaf today having a better flavor as well as the economics of the average consumer in Spain has improved,” said Fabian.
The European market remains the single biggest consumer of decaffeinated coffee with over 35% of the global revenue share in 2019, market intelligence by San Francisco-based Grand View Research company said in a recent report, in which it detailed that global demand for decaf is predicted to grow between 7.4-8.2% from 2020-2027.
*For more on trends in the global decaf market, don’t miss our special article “Strong Consumer Growth; New Health Focus” in the Aug-Sep edition now online at; https://stir-tea-coffee.com/