Cambodia Drinks 20,000 Tons of Coffee a Year — So Why Does It Produce Only Around 1,000 Tons?

Cambodia has a coffee paradox. The country has land suitable for coffee, a growing café culture and an emerging Robusta origin in Mondulkiri. Yet a 2026 report in the Phnom Penh Post estimated annual domestic coffee consumption at around 20,000 tonnes while local production supplied only about 1,000 tonnes.

That gap is not evidence that Cambodia cannot grow coffee. It is evidence that the local coffee value chain is still young.

A coffee-drinking country before it became a coffee-producing country

Cambodia’s modern café market developed faster than its farming sector. Hotels, restaurants, chains and independent cafés need reliable volumes every week. Importers can obtain those volumes from established origins such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Brazil and Indonesia.

Local production, by comparison, has historically been fragmented. Earlier estimates placed national coffee area at only a few hundred hectares. Even as planting expands, coffee trees take years to reach meaningful production. A new plantation cannot respond to rising demand in the same way an importer can simply place a larger order.

This explains why domestic demand can grow rapidly while local supply remains small.

Geography is not the same as supply-chain capacity

Mondulkiri has conditions that can support Robusta: elevation, cooler highland weather compared with Cambodia’s lowlands and significant rainfall. But good growing conditions are only one part of a coffee industry.

Farmers also need seedlings, agronomy, harvest training, processing infrastructure, drying space, storage, quality control, financing and committed buyers. Without those systems, expanding acreage does not automatically create export-ready coffee.

Recent investment shows that this is beginning to change. SNV’s work with Kofi describes the construction of a processing facility in Mondulkiri, farmer training, a growing smallholder network and a sharp increase in locally sourced volumes. By late 2025, Kofi was sourcing from 484 farmers farming 671 hectares.

Why imports still dominate

Imports solve three problems immediately: volume, consistency and availability. A roaster serving hundreds of cafés cannot depend on an origin that produces only a small seasonal crop unless it has backup supply.

Cambodia therefore imports coffee not because local coffee has no future, but because the domestic industry is not yet large enough to replace established supply chains.

World Bank trade data also show that Cambodia continues to import green coffee, with Vietnam the largest supplier in 2024. This is logical: Vietnam is the world’s dominant Robusta producer and sits directly next door.

The 19,000-tonne gap is also an opportunity

If the estimate of 20,000 tonnes of consumption and roughly 1,000 tonnes of domestic production is directionally correct, Cambodia does not need to conquer the global market to create a meaningful coffee industry. Replacing even a small percentage of imports with reliable local coffee would represent major growth for farmers and processors.

The challenge is not simply “grow more coffee.” It is to grow more coffee without losing quality.

For Mondulkiri, that means selective harvesting, better drying, traceability, stable purchasing contracts and processing systems that can deliver repeatable results.

Cambodia does not need to become Vietnam

Vietnam’s advantage is scale. Cambodia’s opportunity may be the opposite.

A small origin can focus on traceable lots, farmer identity, carefully processed Fine Robusta and a clear regional story. Instead of competing for the cheapest commodity Robusta contract, Cambodia can build a higher-value category around provenance and quality.

The production gap looks enormous today. But it also means the domestic market already exists. Cambodia’s coffee farmers do not need to invent demand from zero. They need to build a supply chain capable of meeting it.

That is a very different starting point—and potentially a much stronger one.