Australians are proud of their coffee. From claims to the origin of the Flat White to our cities topping lists for the perfect cup, we’re pretty serious about how and what blend we’re drinking. While we might be used to the local roaster using beans from areas of Africa, South America, or sometimes Papua New Guinea, what we may not be aware of is the burgeoning coffee culture brewing (sorry) in Southeast Asia. This development could provide Australia opportunities for “coffee diplomacy” to engage further in the region.
Coffee in nations such as Laos, Thailand, and the Philippines has moved beyond the iced coffee from the local street cart (kafae boran, please) or the café Americano. I’m not talking about Starbucks or the Coffee Club. Instead, cafés and roasters dedicated to higher-end selection of beans and methods of extraction are becoming prevalent in towns and cities across Southeast Asia, with regional baristas regularly taking out top prizes at international competitions.
An Indonesian won the 2024 World Barista Championship, alongside a Thai barista in tenth place.
An Indonesian won the 2024 World Barista Championship, alongside a Thai barista in tenth place, and while Vietnam and Indonesia rank in the top five coffee exporters worldwide, beans from Laos, Thailand, and others are increasingly supplying cafes domestically and offering their own unique, high-quality product.
Interestingly, the only Australian roaster to place in the 2024 World Roasting Championships doesn’t seem to use Southeast Asian beans in their blends at all, and this is a missed opportunity. Shared passions for coffee can be leveraged into avenues for relationships between Australia and its partners through trade and investment, skills-sharing, and stronger people-to-people links and relationships.
Take Laos as an example.
Laos is invested in its coffee. In 2021, the nation launched the Coffee Sector Export Roadmap as a plan for increasing productivity, sustainability, and capacity in production and processing of beans for export, primarily to the European Union and as a complement to the 2014 Lao Coffee Sector Development Strategy. The coffee industry is the nation’s third-largest agricultural export, with significant numbers of smallholder farmers relying on the crop to sustain rural economies, as well as offer opportunities for women’s participation. Government interest in coffee exports seems to be working, with current US Department of Agriculture reporting showing coffee production in Laos increasing each year from 2021 to 2025, despite facing challenges in price volatility and weather events.
Australia can take advantage of this potential to build further trade, development, and diplomatic ties with Laos. Both nations are joined as a part of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and in 2024 signed a Joint Declaration to elevate the bilateral relationship to a Comprehensive Partnership. The Australian Embassy in Laos has already leveraged coffee in a 2024 event exploring coffee connections between Australia and ASEAN, utilising local cafés to supply Australian coffee beans for local guests.
Remember the winner of the 2024 World Barista Championship? He spent his formative years building skills at Australian cafés while studying at Australian universities.
These links could be developed further, with Australian roasters collaborating with Lao and regional professionals on blends, but also in bringing more Lao-grown beans into the Australian market and coffee roasting and blending vocabulary. The $2 billion Southeast Asia Investment Financing Facility could be utilised to facilitate Australian businesses partnering with suppliers or in developing local farming and commercial infrastructure. This support can assist farmers to overcome challenges such as low-farm level productivity, development of quality standards, logistical costs, as well as low capacity for research and commercialisation. The UN has already begun a 2025-28 project building Laos sustainable coffee export strategies, which Australian efforts could capitalise on.
These endeavours further support Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040, which directly identified supporting Lao high-quality agricultural exports such as coffee as an opportunity for exchange with Australia’s own agriculture sector. Australia can further act as a facilitator for Pacific partners in sharing coffee product with Southeast Asian roasters, allowing for not only further collaboration, innovation, and creativity in the market, but in fostering relationships between our partners where there may not be clear existing avenues.
Coffee professionals from Laos can further be supported to spend time in Australia honing their skills, sharing knowledge, and establishing links with local industry. Temporary Skilled Visa classes can be leveraged for this purpose, considering hospitality workers are already included in the most recent figures for top occupations of employed temporary residents in Australia. “Café Manager” was further in a list of top nominated professions for visa applications granted in 2023-24.
This form of public diplomacy can be highly valuable in capacity building and fostering people-to-people links. Remember the winner of the 2024 World Barista Championship? He spent his formative years building skills at Australian cafés while studying at Australian universities. It’s a similar story for his Thai counterpart who took out tenth place, and Laos is still underrepresented across figures for all Australian visa categories.
The potential opportunities for coffee diplomacy between Australia and Laos outlined can be utilised as a template in building ties with other Southeast Asian nations such as Thailand and the Philippines, as well as partners such as Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, who each grow significant amounts of coffee. Until more beans from our neighbours are offered in the Australian market, I’ll pour myself another cup of Saffron smuggled from recent travels.
