A coffee cultural week kicked off on Friday in Jiangmen, Guangdong province. The city will jointly work with the Circulation Industry Promotion Center of the Ministry of Commerce to develop a coffee consumption industry base. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A coffee consumption industry base, a joint project between the Circulation Industry Promotion Center of the Ministry of Commerce and the government of Jiangmen, Guangdong province, will be built to increase industry output, according to a strategic cooperation agreement signed by the two parties.

The first of its kind, the base will become an industrial development platform integrating incubation, procurement and trading, research, talent training and supply chains for the coffee industry.

The agreement was signed during a coffee cultural week which kicked off on Friday in Jiangmen, a city in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The event attracted more than 100 coffee brands from major cities in the GBA.

Authorities in Jiangmen plan to increase coffee bean baking output to 10,000 tons within three years, cultivating a number of leading coffee brands and achieving an annual output value of more than 5 billion yuan ($737.49 million) by 2025.

Jiangmen, home to millions of overseas Chinese, has a long history with the crop, as overseas Chinese brought coffee back to the city in the 1860s.

The city currently has 13 coffee baking plants with an annual capacity of about 5,000 tons and an output value of about 600 million yuan.

The city mainly imports raw coffee beans from Malaysia, Colombia, Brazil, Ethiopia and other countries and regions, with products supplied to shops in Hong Kong, Macao, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.