Some dealers want the Jamaica Coffee Festival 2021 changed from March to January to align with the Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Day.
“The coffee dealers want January and that makes sense for us,”said a source who wouldn’t give their name due to the sensitive stage of negotiations. “Coffee dealers are considering pulling out and doing our own thing next January.
It sounds like a no brainer to align a local festival with a Day that’s promoted in Japan and Jamaica for coffee. The coffee festival is however produced by an arm of the Ministry of Tourism and their mandate is to drive visitors to the island during slow periods like March.
The Coffee Festival produced by the Ministry in its third consecutive year but there were previous intermittent staging in the past.
Since the 1960s, Japan was the main buyer and marketer of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. The January date signifies the first real shipment to the Asian country. The inaugural Jamaica Blue Mountain (JBM) Coffee Day was celebrated in 2019.
There is also International Coffee Day held in October. That occasion is used to promote and celebrate coffee as a beverage, with events occurring globally. The first official date was 1 October 2015, as agreed by the International Coffee Organisation and was launched in Milan.
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