he Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) will next month launch a centre to handle shipments of coffee from Latin America, China, Africa and Greece, executive chairman Ahmed Bin Sulayem said on Monday.

“We are looking to launch the Coffee Centre in November. It is ready and built. We are just waiting for the certification to go ahead,” Sulayem told Reuters.

The centre, near Dubai’s Jebel Ali port, is a temperature-controlled facility offering infrastructure and services for green bean storage and processing and delivery of coffee.

The DMCC projects the centre will handle up to 20,000 tonnes of green coffee beans annually, with an estimated trade value of up to $100 million.

The facility will attempt to imitate the success of the DMCC’s Tea Centre; Dubai now imports tea from around 13 origins, and estimates about 60 per cent of the world’s tea re-exports go through the emirate.

In 2016 the DMCC signed an agreement with Mega Capital Halal, a Hong Kong-based holding company, to import coffee from China’s Yunnan State Farms Group into Dubai for world distribution.