What can be brewed from a handful of coffee beans? A beverage, a snack, or even different kinds of cultural and creative products? Wanning, located in southeast Hainan, has the answer. This is the home of Xinglong Coffee, a decades old homegrown coffee brand that’s lately been stirring up more and more interest from all around the world.

A cup of traditional Xinglong Coffee. (Photo: Yuan Chen / Hainan Daily)

The World Coffee Auction Center, the first of a new kind of coffee trading market in China, was opened in July in Wanning, with Tianshan, a type of Robusta coffee grown in the nearby town of Xinglong, selling at a bidding price of 980 yuan ($134) per kg.

The M1 Coffee Dream Factory, where the auction center is situated, opened in 2021, and has become a popular destination that not only offers many different flavors of coffee but also holds coffee themed activities. Children can have fun playing with coffee powder and creating their own powder paintings.

 Children playing and painting with coffee powder in the M1 Coffee Dream Factory. (Photo: Zhang Huining / Hainan Daily)

According to Vice Mayor Zheng Zhongfa, Wanning promotes the integrated development of the Xinglong coffee industry, including cultivation, processing, marketing, and travel. Today, the city has five coffee parks, four coffee-themed shared farms, and two coffee themed scenic attractions, as well as over 200 cafes in the Xinglong area alone.

Longyuan Coffee Park in Xinglong. (Photo: Hainan Daily)

In 2022, the integration of the agriculture and travel industries led to a combined output value of 75,493,300 yuan (approx. $10.32 million), thanks in part to more than 300,000 visitors. The production of the coffee industry chain as a whole was valued at 350 million yuan (approx. $47.8 million), and is expected to reach 500 million yuan (approx. $58.3 million) this year.

Thanks to the preferential policies of the Hainan Free Trade Port, coffee processing enterprises in Wanning are encouraged to import raw materials in order to develop an international coffee processing base as well as to bring in international advanced production equipment to promote hi-tech agriculture.

Charoen Pokphand Group (CP Group), a multinational corporation with a regional office in Beijing, has established a branch in Xinglong to develop the local coffee industry. This year, the company imported 57.6 tons of coffee beans from Ethiopia, the first time this type of business was transacted since the official implementation of the RCEP in Hainan.

"We have brought in coffee beans from different regions around the world, and have launched cherry blossom, cardamom, black sugar, and mulberry flavored coffees," said Ke Peng, head of the company’s marketing department.

Ke added that they have built two production workshops: one using traditional Xinglong coffee roasting technology, the other equipped with imported equipment. The improvement of processing coffee on a fully automatic production line has contributed to a rise in annual production capacity to as much as 3,000 tons.

A coffee industrial park established by Charoen Pokphand Group (CP Group) in Xinglong opened in July 2022. (Photo: Chen Daohuang)

At present, there are 10 large-scale coffee processing enterprises in Wanning, with a combined annual processing capacity of over 6,000 tons and an annual output value of more than 150 million yuan (approx. $20.5 million) in total.

In addition to coffee production and processing, the city is building a global coffee product sales and futures trading center, which will enjoy duty-free imports from the world's major coffee-producing countries. Wanning is also strengthening in-depth cooperation with commodity trading institutions such as the Yunnan and Chongqing Coffee Exchanges as well as creating an international first-class coffee industry e-commerce and financial services platform.

At the beginning of this year, the local government signed a coffee specialization market cooperation agreement with the Hainan State Farms Group (also known as Haiken Group) in order to develop Hainan into a global trade hub for premium Robusta coffee.

"Wanning has become an important Robusta coffee production area." Zheng explained that the existing coffee cultivation area covers around 5.6 square kilometers across the city, which will be expanded to around 6.7 square kilometers of modern standard coffee farms.

A farmer picking coffee beans in the Longyuan Coffee Park. (Photo: Song Guoqiang / Hainan Daily)

With the continuous improvement of the quality of Robusta coffee beans, coffee businesses in Xinglong are keeping up with current coffee trends by developing cold brew coffee, drip coffee, portable hand-brewed coffee, and other popular products favored by young consumers.

In the first half of this year, the local government issued plans to give incentives to Xinglong Coffee stores across China. Incentives are awarded according to the size of the store, topping out at 300,000 yuan (approx. $41,000).