A tiny Asian nation on the island of Borneo, Brunei is surrounded by Malaysia and the South China Sea. With a population of just 428,000, Brunei’s ability to produce coffee is capped, but what they do produce is almost exclusively Arabica (though their neighbor Malaysia is the world leader in Liberica production).
Like South Sudan, coffee is a new industry for Brunei with its first beans hitting the market in China just over two years ago. This crop is thanks to a single Brunei farmer, Yong Khian Fook, whose green-skinned orange trees were wiped out by disease in the early 2000s. Yong says he’s planted about 10,000 coffee plants in Brunei, which take up about half of his farm, and he’s ready to go all-in on coffee if the country’s lacking infrastructure (processing, shipping, etc.) isn’t an obstacle.
