Japanese interest may boost Blue Mountain coffee production

Christopher Serju, Gleaner Writer

THE VISIT by a Japanese team could just be the impetus that gets the Blue Mountain train rolling again, like it did for some three decades before the global recession derailed what had been a lucrative market for Jamaican coffee farmers. That, at the least, is the hope of Christopher Gentles, director general of the Coffee Industry Board (CIB), the local regulatory agency.

"We are confident that this will assist in the re-engaging of roasters within Japan, with the Jamaican coffee," Gentles told The Gleaner recently.

He was in the company of members of the East Japan Coffee Roasters Association during a tour of coffee farms in the Blue Mountains. The group which enjoyed a one-week visit is among the 81 roasters and cafés which make up the All Japan Coffee Association, which oversees the purchase of the entire seven million bags of coffee Japan imports.

The challenging times faced by the cash-strapped coffee industry is linked to the significantly reduced volume of Jamaican coffee available to the Japanese market after Hurricane Ivan devastated crops, wiping out some farmers. As a result, local farmers were unable to meet the 300-tonne demand and the market is yet to recover from what Gentles described as an evaporation of the raw material on which the Japanese were depending heavily.

Insufficient volume

"The Japanese decided that there was insufficient volume from Jamaica to run the ready-to-drink market, that is coffee in the can. What has happened also is that the gift market has changed because of the recession so we have had to modify our offerings to fit the market," Gentles explained.

Meanwhile, Teiichi Takita, general manager in the sales department of the Tokyo-based MC Foods Limited which gets most of produce from the Mavis Bank Coffee factory, said they were not buying much now, the recession having cut their spending power by 50 per cent. He explained that this was a direct result of the financial fallout in the United States, repercussions of which had rocked the Japanese economy.

"Expensive goods cannot sell so easily, maybe reduced to half. Blue Mountain Coffee say like Benz car, cannot sell so easily. Blue Mountain (Coffee) is one of that, we cannot purchase so much, but in the future we hope the market will recover," the importer shared with The Gleaner.

"So we have to do something. Therefore, I have brought some people here to study Blue Mountain Coffee and I would like to help recovery of Blue Mountain consumption, quick as possible."