British-based chain Costa Coffee plans southeast Asian invasion with market entry in Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia now underway.

Costa Coffee, which lags behind Starbucks in store numbers, plans to capitalise on coffee’s growing popularity in the east.

“This is the start of a significant store-opening program across southeast Asia in the next few years,” said Christopher Rogers, MD, Costa Coffee.

The launches in Thailand and Cambodia are planned in November while Singapore’s first store opens this week.

Costa Coffee boasts a network of over 2200 stores in 25 countries worldwide, including 1400 outlets in its home market and roughly 200 in China. The company expects to operate 3500 stores by 2016, and is targeting annual sales of 1.3 billion pounds (US$2.04 billion).

Meanwhile, Costa Coffee plans to open 100 more outlets in India as it braces for the arrival of American coffee giant Starbucks.

Costa Coffee has recently added new markets including Kuwait, Russia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE.

The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of hotel and restaurant company Whitbread.

GB