Starbucks has announced the eagerly antiCoffee Innovation Parkated opening of its China Coffee Innovation Park, fulfilling its scaled vertical integration ‘from bean-to-cup’ across one market – a first for the company globally. Since the Coffee Innovation Park’s initial announcement in March 2020, Starbucks has made two additional rounds of investments, making it the largest investment in any Starbucks coffee manufacturing and distribution centre outside the United States at RMB1.5 billion (~US$220 million). The Coffee Innovation Park holds the distinction of being designed to be Starbucks' most energy-efficient and sustainable coffee manufacturing and distribution centre in the world.
“As one of the largest consumer markets in the world, China presents tremendous opportunities for Starbucks. The Coffee Innovation Park highlights Starbucks' foresight in elevating the supply chain through digitalisation and advancing our sustainability agenda, enhancing our unique competitive advantage as we accelerate our global growth,” said Laxman Narasimhan, CEO of Starbucks Coffee Company.
“I couldn’t be prouder of the China team’s visionary thinking. As Starbucks' largest and fastest-growing international market, we will continue to deepen our investment and reinforce our unwavering long-term commitment to the China market.”
Located in the city of Kunshan, an hour from Shanghai, the 80,000m2 Coffee Innovation Park features a roasting plant deploying Starbucks' most energy-efficient technology, a state-of-the-art integrated distribution centre (IDC), and an immersive experience centre. It imports high-quality Arabica green beans for roasting, packaging, storage, and distribution while showcasing the ‘bean-to-cup’ coffee journey to visitors and providing coffee-related training all in one location.
Belinda Wong, chairwoman and CEO of Starbucks China, said that the Coffee Innovation Park holds important significance for Starbucks in China and globally, as bell as showcasing unrivalled coffee leadership.
“Fulfilling our scaled vertical integration in China ‘from bean-to-cup’ sets a new benchmark for sustainability in China’s coffee industry. Its immersive experience centre further elevates China’s specialty coffee industry with a multi-sensory showcase of the coffee journey. The Coffee Innovation Park is yet another testament that Starbucks' purpose and commitment to China go far beyond a cup of coffee,” said Wong.
With the capacity to supply all Starbucks coffee locations in China, including as the company continues to grow, the Coffee Innovation Park will use advanced eco-friendly technologies to blend and roast high-quality Arabica green beans sourced from more than 30 countries around the world, including China.
It will power up Starbucks' speed and agility in product innovation, enabling the company to produce quality coffee tailored for China. Starbucks China has cultivated a team of 20 local roasters, including the only female Master Roaster for Starbucks globally. Carefully selected from among 60,000 Starbucks China partners, every roaster in the Coffee Innovation Park has undergone 600 hours of intensive training in the United States and China. Through cultivating local coffee roasting talent, leveraging Starbucks’ more than 50 years of global roasting expertise combined with local insights, the Coffee Innovation Park will be able to develop a variety of unique blends and roast profiles in future that are created to meet the evolving tastes of Chinese customers.
Freshly roasted coffee will be delivered to Starbucks stores market-wide from the IDC, which serves as the centre of Starbucks China’s distribution network, directly supplying thousands of Starbucks stores in the region. As Starbucks most highly automated distribution centre globally, the IDC uses advanced automation technologies to handle over 90 percent of volume. Also noteworthy is its 34-meter high fully automated storage and retrieval system, which makes the IDC six times more space-efficient compared to a conventional Starbucks warehouse.
Transcending traditional notions of a manufacturing site, the Coffee Innovation Park features an immersive Experience Center that provides a creative and unique interpretation of industrial tourism with an authentic, vivid showcase of the ‘bean-to-cup’ coffee journey. Through the Experience Center, Starbucks brings to life the miraculous power of a small coffee bean, for more people to experience the romance and artistry of coffee craft, learn about the many hands working together to ensure a sustainable future for coffee, and be inspired to do their part to support planet-positive industries and lead eco-friendlier lifestyles.
Comprising 12 touchpoints, visitors are transported across the world virtually to experience the sights, sounds and smells of faraway coffee origins from China’s Yunnan province to the farms in Costa Rica. They will witness roasting in person and up close as they learn about the latest innovations and sustainability practices at different parts of the coffee value chain. For the most loyal fans, select Starbucks Rewards Gold members will be able to immerse themselves in this wondrous experience in the near future.
Starbucks has been contributing to building a leading specialty coffee industry in China since entering the Chinese mainland market in 1999. It has operated a Farmer Support Center in Yunnan since 2012 to provide open‐source agronomy resources to local coffee farmers. Earlier this month, it established the Starbucks China Innovation and Tech Center, focused on incubating human-centric digital retail innovations for the China market, where a new Starbucks store opens every nine hours. Starbucks has a market footprint of over 6,500 stores across more than 250 Chinese cities. It continues to ramp up its commitment in China as it strives towards its ambition to operate 9,000 stores across 300 Chinese cities by 2025 and invest over US $450 million. This will be complemented by 4,000 “We Proudly Serve” Starbucks Coffee Foodservice sites.
