From bean to cup: Dubai's 'university of coffee' taps into the roaring trade in the black stuff

Inside sprawling warehouses in Jebel Ali, speciality coffee is cleaned, roasted, packed and scrutinised by experts in a massive operation. The aim? To make Dubai a hub that connects farmers from South America to South-east Asia with buyers across the globe. The DMCC Coffee Centre, which opened this year, handles shipments of green beans or unroasted coffee from countries across Latin America, Europe and Africa and provides temperature-controlled storage facilities and training for baristas. The National spent a day inside the state-of-the art facility at the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, where beans were poured into large silos and sieves in machines that remove stones and impurities. Further down, within a cavernous warehouse, workers stacked sacks of coffee beans ready for export. Inside a roastery, cast iron machines processed green coffee from Rwanda and in an nearby squeaky-clean laboratory, a quality analysis was conducted on a new blend. Bags of honey coffee from Burundi are stacked on shelves, waiting for the most discerning of buyers. "We are trying to create an ecosystem where you have a one-stop facility for everyone," said Sanjeev Dutta, DMCC's executive director for commodities and financial services. “We don’t only do container loads. You could have three bags of coffee that you air freight to us from any part of the world to make it available in a sample or to explore business opportunities.” Apart from big traders, the centre also allows small producers and purchasers to set up quickly instead of investing millions of dollars in machinery and building a facility. "Over a period of time you can come to the DMCC Coffee Centre and [gain] access [to] whichever origin you are looking for, in whatever format you want – whether green or roasted beans and in any packing format," Mr Dutta said. “You can also blend several origins and come up with unique products or roast various recipes and come up with different blends.” At a small coffee bar in the lobby area, an Italian coffee maker experiments with a rich, thick coffee cream that is offered to visitors. Staffers proudly refer to the centre as the 'University of Coffee' and members who signed up have begun trying new flavours that they plan to introduce to the Middle East market. Diploma programmes are on offer – from barista skills to training in brewing and roasting – and more than 150 students have completed the courses. “We’ve gained a lot of exposure in the regional coffee business,” said Niyal Shapi, managing director of Bakhsons Trading International. The Arabica coffee trading company, whose headquarters is in Uganda, is among more than 40 companies that signed up since the formal launch in February. "The biggest advantage is setting up in a built-in infrastructure; this has really cut down costs. In addition, it has exposed us to the entire spectrum of the coffee business from A to Z. We see a huge potential in how the centre can benefit our positioning in the region." The centre aims to place Dubai at the heart of the world's coffee trade, making it a hub for speciality traders, buyers, roasters and producers while boosting the emirate's revenue. Located in the Jebel Ali Free Zone, the centre aims to replicate the success of the DMCC Tea Centre, located nearby in the free zone, which handles 60 per cent of the world's tea re-exports. One of the world's most widely consumed hot beverages, the global coffee industry is worth an estimated Dh367.3 billion ($100bn), with the industry in the Middle East expected to grow in value to Dh16.2bn ($4.4bn) by 2021, according to data from market research firm Euromonitor. The centre can clean, de-stone and pack up to three and a half tonnes of green coffee every hour. For roasting, the centre is projected to handle up to 20,000 tonnes of green coffee in a year. “Until now, the region simply did not have the capacity, equipment or expertise to facilitate global coffee trade on this scale, and we look forward to seeing the impact of our centre on the industry going forward,” Ahmed Bin Sulayem, DMCC executive chairman, said during the launch earlier this year. With coffee beans coming in from South America, India, Africa and China, the centre is looking at business opportunities from within the region and as far as Australia.

From bean to cup: Dubai's 'university of coffee' taps into the roaring trade in the black stuff

The Coffee Centre cleans, roasts and packs beans from across the globe - and trains the next generation of baristas