Starbucks brews plan to make Pu'er a sourcing area (3)

Lu Han, director of Pu'er Coffee Industry Federation, said the city's exports of coffee beans in 2011 and 2012 totaled 24,700 tons, worth $100 million.

"As more people overseas begin to appreciate Yunnan coffee, we also want to promote it inside China. Cooperation with Starbucks would definitely help," he said.

The Yunnan provincial government issued a plan last year to develop the coffee industry into a strategic sector. It set a target of expanding Yunnan's coffee growing area to 607,000 hectares by 2020, realizing an annual output of 200,000 tons, with an estimated value of 34 billion yuan.

A total of 50,000 tons of Yunnan coffee beans were sold overseas in 2011. Although this only accounted for 0.6 to 0.7 percent of the global transaction volume, the figure is a record high in the history of the province's coffee exports