A Chinese customer sits inside a Starbucks shop in Beijing in this Jan 3, 2006 file photo. [AP Photo]

Beijing Sanyuan Company will continue to hold the remaining 10 per cent stake in Beijing Mei Da.

The deal comes at a time when the coffee chain giant is accelerating its expansion in China, which its chairman said, "would soon become the firm's largest market outside of North America."

China accounted for less than 10 per cent of Starbucks' US$6.4 billion global sales in 2005, its chairman Howard Schultz said in an interview with China Daily earlier this year.

"We believe China will eventually be the largest international market for Starbucks going forward," Martin Coles, president of Starbucks Coffee International, said at a press event yesterday in Beijing.

The US coffee chain operator is planning to open 20,000 stores around the world in the coming years, of which half are expected to be in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Coles.

"And in China, the number will be in the thousands," the president said yesterday, declining to give specific figures.

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