Winning in the EU Market: How Vietnam’s US$8B Coffee Sector Can Transition from Volume to Verified, Digital, and Sustainable Supply Chains
- Carlene Darius
- 7 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 18 hours ago
Editor’s Note:
Vietnam’s coffee sector has long been defined by scale. Today, its next phase of competitiveness will be defined by proof. As global buyers, regulators, and financiers increasingly demand verified origin, deforestation-free sourcing, and emissions transparency, access to premium markets such as the European Union is no longer determined solely by price or volume. Instead, it hinges on data integrity, digital traceability, and the ability to demonstrate sustainability at farm level. This article examines how Vietnam’s record-breaking coffee sector can convert regulatory pressure into a strategic advantage by moving decisively toward verified, digital, and climate-smart supply chains.
Executive Summary
Vietnam’s coffee sector achieved record growth in 2025, with export revenues surpassing US $8 billion and shipments reaching around 1.5 million tonnes, driven by strong global demand and higher export prices. For the first time, roasted and other processed coffee products contributed more than US $1 billion in export value, signalling a shift toward value-added and specialty segments rather than raw bean exports (SGGP, 2026; Văn Nông nghiệp & Môi trường, 2025).
The European Union remains Vietnam’s most strategic coffee market, and access is increasingly shaped by requirements for traceability, sustainability information, and climate reporting, driven by regulatory frameworks such as EUDR, as well as upcoming CS3D and CSRD, alongside growing buyer expectations for responsibly sourced and differentiated coffee.
At the 29th Asia International Coffee Conference, industry stakeholders converged on a clear message: verified traceability, due diligence, and emissions intelligence are rapidly becoming baseline requirements for competitiveness in the EU market. Aligned with these trajectories, Koltiva’s equips exporters, roasters, and traders with the tools needed to verify origin, prepare for certification, and measure emissions, enabling Vietnam’s coffee sector to secure compliance and premium access in demanding markets.
Vietnam’s Coffee Momentum Reaches a New Peak
Vietnam’s coffee sector is experiencing unprecedented growth, driven by high global prices and sustained demand. In 2025, Vietnam’s coffee export performance set a historic milestone, with revenues surpassing US$8 billion, driven by strong global demand, higher export prices, and increased shipments. Total exports reached around 1.5 million tons, with export value up more than 60 percent compared to the previous year, reflecting both volume growth and higher average prices (SGGP, 2026).
Beyond gains in raw export volume, Vietnamese enterprises have also increased investments in processing technologies and traceability systems to enhance product value and meet tightening buyer expectations. As a result, roasted and other processed coffee products exceeded US$1 billion in export value in just eight months for the first time, marking a shift toward specialty and value-added segments rather than relying solely on raw green bean exports. In parallel, companies have leveraged free trade agreements such as the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), the Vietnam-UK Free Trade Agreement (UKVFTA), and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to diversify markets, reduce tariff barriers, and boost export turnover (Văn Nông nghiệp & Môi trường, 2025).
Yet beneath this strong export performance lies a complex production reality. Vietnam’s coffee sector remains overwhelmingly smallholder-driven, with hundreds of thousands of producers cultivating relatively small and fragmented plots, particularly across the Central Highlands. While this structure has enabled rapid scale and resilience, it also presents challenges for data consistency, land-use verification, and traceability at plot level. As EU market requirements evolve, the ability to digitally capture farm boundaries, production practices, and transaction histories across this fragmented landscape will increasingly determine whether growth translates into sustained market access and price premiums.
Taken together, this record performance reinforces Vietnam’s position not only as a volume leader but as a growing value contributor in global coffee markets, supporting deeper engagement with premium consuming regions such as the European Union and the United States.
Why the EU Coffee Markets Matter More than Ever
As Vietnam’s value contribution grows, the European Union stands out as its most consequential premium export destination. This trend aligns with Vietnam’s gradual shift toward processed and specialty coffee, driven by investments in processing and traceability that better match European buyer preferences for differentiated and responsibly sourced products. Vietnam’s access to the EU market has also been strengthened by the EVFTA, which reduces tariff barriers and expands market opportunities for agricultural exports, especially coffee. From January to November 2025, Germany, Italy, and Spain were Vietnam’s largest EU buyers, with Germany alone importing nearly 200,000 tonnes or almost double from 2024.
However, as the market demand evolves, the basis of competitiveness in the EU is changing. Buyers are placing greater weight on verified origin, sustainability, and supply chain transparency alongside price and quality. These expectations are reinforced by the EU Deforestation Regulation, which requires imported coffee to be deforestation-free and traceable to specific plots of land. Compliance deadlines are now phased, with large operators required to comply by 30 December 2026 and micro and small enterprises by 30 June 2027, providing a defined preparation window for producing countries and supply-chain actors.
For Vietnamese exporters, the phased EUDR timeline represents more than regulatory relief, it defines a competitive dividing line. Companies that embed digital traceability and verification systems early are better positioned to maintain uninterrupted EU access, strengthen buyer trust, and negotiate premiums. Conversely, exporters that postpone preparation risk last-minute compliance bottlenecks, increased verification costs, and potential exclusion from high-value supply chains as European buyers rationalize their sourcing toward lower-risk, data-ready origins.
For Vietnam’s coffee sector, this timeline provides a strategic window to include digital traceability more deeply across production and export systems. Rather than delaying action, the extension allows stakeholders to strengthen farm-level data collection, geolocation mapping, and verification processes.
Translating these regulatory and market expectations into day-to-day operations requires practical systems that work across fragmented, smallholder-dominated coffee supply chains. For exporters supplying the EU, this means ensuring that farm-level geolocation data, supplier records, and transaction histories are consistently captured, verified, and linked to shipment documentation, rather than managed through manual or disconnected processes.
Within this context, Koltiva operates as digital infrastructure for compliance-ready sourcing, enabling exporters to move from fragmented documentation toward auditable, systemized supply chains. Through KoltiTrace MIS, Koltiva enables structured producer and plot registration, GPS and polygon mapping, and geospatial risk analysis aligned with EU traceability standards. These capabilities are complemented by KoltiSkills, which supports field verification, producer training, and risk mitigation at origin, helping address data gaps and non-compliance before export. In parallel, KoltiPay strengthens financial inclusion by enabling transparent, traceable transactions between buyers and producers, reinforcing data integrity across the supply chain.
Vietnam is currently Koltiva’s third-largest coffee origin globally, following Indonesia and Kenya. Since 2013, Koltiva has digitally managed 1,258,788 verified farm plots and production areas (hectares) and registered 487,339 producers, demonstrating how integrated traceability, field support, and payment systems can collectively support EUDR readiness while strengthening quality consistency and long-term buyer confidence in the EU market.
Preparing Vietnam’s Coffee Sector for EU Market Expectations: Takeaways from the 29th AICC 2025
As regulatory, commercial, and climate expectations evolve across the coffee sector, industry platforms have become critical for aligning producing countries with emerging market realities. Last month, Koltiva participated in the 29th Asia International Coffee Conference, represented by our Senior Head of Markets for APAC, Olivier Barents, and Lily Tran, Business Development Lead, amid growing alignment that verified data, emissions intelligence, and digitalisation will define the next phase of global coffee competitiveness. For Vietnam, which already serves premium-consuming destinations such as the EU, these capabilities are increasingly tied to market access, price premiums, and long-term resilience.
Reflecting on the discussions, Lily Tran said, “EU compliance is rapidly expanding beyond EUDR. CS3D, CSRD, and emissions disclosures are already shaping buyer expectations. Consequently, traceability and verification systems will dictate Vietnam’s continued access to premium markets.”
Held in Ho Chi Minh City in early December 2025, the conference convened producers, business leaders, policymakers, and technology providers to assess how producing countries can respond to regulatory pressure while maintaining competitiveness. Throughout the sessions, four intersecting themes emerged. Regulatory panels highlighted the acceleration of EU-linked due diligence and corporate accountability frameworks, with EUDR serving as the immediate priority and CS3D (expected July 2028) and CSRD signaling a broader shift toward ESG-aligned reporting and supply-chain transparency. Climate discussions complemented this by highlighting that nitrogen fertilizers are the dominant source of coffee emissions, linking soil health and input use to climate performance. Notably, emissions modeling referenced the Cool Farm Tool methodology, mirroring the approach used in Koltiva’s climate tools and signaling convergence around standardized climate accounting.
Moreover, technology and market dynamics formed the other half of the conversation. Agri-tech sessions showcased how AI-enabled tools are being integrated into farm management, enabling better monitoring, input optimization, and quality control, reflecting a gradual shift in which producers act as data-driven farm managers. Meanwhile, market outlooks highlighted the rapid growth of specialty coffee ecosystems in the Philippines, China, and Indonesia, where origin storytelling, sensory differentiation, and traceability are becoming valuable in their own right. In conclusion, towards the future, producing countries must document compliance, quantify emissions, and demonstrate product differentiation to secure and expand market access.
From Insight to Action: How Koltiva’s Solutions is Reshaping Coffee Supply Chain for the Next Decade
Responding to this advancement in the industry, in 2026 Koltiva expands its product roadmap with new capabilities designed to help coffee exporters, traders, and brands meet rising regulatory and market expectations. Two core innovation tracks will anchor this effort:
Unified Compliance & Certification Systems
Koltiva will enhance support for both voluntary and mandatory sustainability frameworks, including RSPO, Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade, Organic, 4C, GDST, GPSNR framework and others, through configurable checklists, workflow automation, and digital evidence packs embedded in KoltiTrace MIS and field applications. These features reduce audit preparation time, improve certification pass rates, and equip exporters to comply with emerging due diligence and ESG disclosure requirements under CS3D and CSRD, going beyond EUDR alone.
Climate Targets & Emissions Intelligence
Building on existing climate capabilities, Koltiva will expand emissions accounting based on IPCC calculations, satellite-based carbon footprinting aligned with SBTi, and mitigation tracking, linking geospatial data, input and activity logs, and verified transactions to produce defensible climate reports. With fertilizer-driven emissions and CFT-based modeling highlighted at AICC as sector priorities, this direction aligns directly with what EU buyers, financiers, and specialty roasters now expect.
Together, these roadmap priorities are designed to support Vietnam’s transition from a high-volume exporter to a digitally verified, climate-smart, and premium-aligned coffee origin. This strengthens resilience in a global market where value is increasingly defined by evidence, not assumption. The foundations of future competitiveness are shifting decisively toward verified traceability, climate performance, due diligence, and product differentiation. In this environment, market access is no longer secured by production capacity alone, but by the ability to demonstrate compliance with evidence, not assumption. For Vietnam’s coffee sector, the opportunity is clear: by embedding digital verification and climate intelligence today, it can protect EU market access, attract long-term investment, and reposition itself as a premium, future-ready origin in the global coffee economy.
Author: Carlene Putri Darius, Marketing Communication
Editor: Daniel Agus Prasetyo, Head of Public Relations and Corporate Communications
About the author:
Carlene Putri Darius is a Marketing Communications Officer at KOLTIVA with passion in sustainability and innovation, Carlene Putri Darius integrates her expertise in technology, marketing, and strategy to promote responsible and inclusive growth. With over three years of experience in consulting, branding, and digital communications, she crafts narratives that connect innovation, sustainability, and social impact for international audiences.
Resources
Văn Nông nghiệp & Môi trường. (2025, October 6). Export turnover of processed coffee surpasses $1 bln. https://van.nongnghiepmoitruong.vn/export-turnover-of-processed-coffee-surpasses-1-bln-d776928.html
Dân trí. (2025, December 14). Hé lộ quốc gia chi hơn 1 tỷ USD nhập cà phê Việt Nam [Vietnam’s coffee export to Germany exceeds US $1 billion]. Dân trí. https://dantri.com.vn/kinh-doanh/he-lo-quoc-gia-chi-hon-1-ty-usd-nhap-ca-phe-viet-nam-20251214143631018.htm
SGGP English Edition. (2026, January 2). Vietnam’s coffee industry brews record year as exports surpass US $8 billion. SGGP English Edition. https://en.sggp.org.vn/vietnams-coffee-industry-brews-record-year-as-exports-surpass-us8-billion-post122937.html
Comments