Pu'er, a city located in a mountainous region of Southwest China's Yunnan province, is famous for its Pu'er tea, a type of fermented tea. However, of late, it has also quietly become a major production hub for China's coffee industry, boasting the nation's largest cultivation area, highest yields and most refined beans.

At Yunnan Simao Beigui Coffee Co Ltd's plantation in Pu'er's Nandaohe Village, workers and farmers are busily involved in washing, pulping, fermenting and drying fresh coffee beans. Each step of the process has been meticulously crafted to ensure the preservation of flavor and quality.

Soon, these beans will be loaded onto trucks and begin their journey to reach coffee shops in booming Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Chengdu, Sichuan province, and also boutique roasters in countries like the Netherlands and Germany.

"Compared with previous years, the coffee cherries of the 2024/2025 harvest season (from October 2024 to March 2025) are larger and glossier, attracting buyers from around the world," said Zhou Zhiyan, the plantation's manager.

The company exported 1,800 metric tons of green coffee beans in 2024, she said.

With its distinctive flavor, Yunnan coffee is winning fans around the world. The province's coffee exports reached 140 million yuan ($19.28 million) in the first two months of 2025, a year-on-year increase of 339.3 percent, data from Kunming Customs showed.

During the same period, Yunnan exported 2,788 tons of coffee, up 114.1 percent on a yearly basis.

Global coffee buyers, especially in Europe, the United States, South Korea and Japan, are actively looking for new origins to diversify their supply chains. Yunnan's emergence fills this need, offering both reliability and novelty, said Li Hong, vice-president of Yunnan Agricultural University, which is headquartered in Kunming, provincial capital of Yunnan.

"Yunnan coffee is known for its clean cup, floral aroma, fruity notes and mild bitterness — qualities that make it competitive on the global stage," said Li. "As farming techniques and processing methods improve, overall consistency and quality of Yunnan coffee have become increasingly attractive to international buyers."

According to Kunming Customs, Yunnan's coffee exports jumped 358 percent year-on-year to 32,500 tons in 2024.

The coffee was shipped to 29 countries and regions — including the Netherlands, the United States, and Vietnam — firmly securing Yunnan's position as the top coffee-exporting region in China.

Zhang Yuebin, vice-president of Kunming-based Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said China's own booming domestic coffee culture has also led to better beans.

As domestic consumers demand higher quality, it has pushed producers in Yunnan to innovate and refine their techniques, and raised the country's coffee import volume, said Zhang.

This is in line with the latest data.

China's imports of coffee, tea and spices amounted to 22.14 billion yuan in 2024, surging 13.4 percent year-on-year, data from the General Administration of Customs showed.

Domestic demand for coffee — especially premium varieties with diverse flavor profiles — has seen a significant increase, and this upward trend will continue this year, said Xing Xiaojing, manager of Customs affairs at Suzhou Mingdoufang Technology Co Ltd, a Suzhou, Jiangsu province-based coffee bean importer and storage services provider.

Xing said the company imported over 8,000 tons of green coffee beans in 2024. They were sold and distributed to downstream businesses like coffee roasters and retailers from the company's storage facilities in Kunshan, Jiangsu.

Kunshan, a major coffee roasting base in China, saw imports of green coffee beans soar 46 percent year-on-year to 1.63 billion yuan last year, accounting for 53.8 percent of the city's total agricultural product imports, according to Nanjing Customs.