- Sri Lanka Coffee Festival
Heads up, Sri Lanka! We’re about to witness our very first coffee festival. Market Development Facility (MDF) in partnership with the Sri Lankan coffee industry is organising the first-ever “Sri Lanka Coffee Festival”, a celebration of home-grown specialty coffee – Sri Lanka’s original (OG) cash crop – and the country’s re-emerging coffee culture.
Market Development Facility is an Australian Government-funded multi-country initiative that promotes sustainable economic development, through higher incomes for women and men, in our partner countries. They connect individuals, businesses, governments, and non-government organisations (NGOs) with each other, and with markets at home and abroad. This enhances investment and co-ordination and allows partnerships to flourish, strengthening inclusive economic growth. MDF is funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). It is implemented by Palladium in partnership with Swisscontact.
Taking place on 25 January, the Sri Lanka Coffee Festival will bring together a variety of stakeholders who are active in the Sri Lankan coffee sector, provide the opportunity for businesses and consumers to sample a variety of local coffee products, understand the potential of “Ceylon Coffee”, hear from international coffee experts, and develop networks within the Sri Lankan coffee community.
The festival will comprise a coffee symposium with presentations by national and international experts, the launch of MDF’s new coffee report, and a coffee expo with coffee tasting opportunities. Speaking to the MDF, Brunch learned that the global specialty coffee industry was valued at $ 35.9 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow to $ 83.5 billion by 2025. Sri Lanka’s position, as always, is well positioned geographically and climatically to produce high-quality specialty coffee, which leaves huge potential for Sri Lanka to contribute to the global coffee industry.
However, Sri Lanka is currently not able to produce a continuous supply of specialty coffee to compete with the global market, which is where MDF identifies a range of opportunities in crop management, post-harvest management, farmer knowledge, and adaptation of modern, innovative agricultural techniques and technologies, to support the local coffee value chain become more resilient and reliable in the future. MDF’s work with the Department of Export Agriculture (DEA) aims to support small to medium-scale coffee plant nurseries to increase coffee seedling production. MDF has also conducted a trial with World Coffee Research (WCR) to understand the genetic variances and profiles of Sri Lankan arabica coffee beans.
MDF Country Director Momina Saqib told Brunch that the key inspiration behind the festival is to highlight the suitability of coffee as a cash crop for Sri Lanka. “Before tea, Sri Lanka was producing coffee,” Saqib explained, adding: “Sri Lanka was one of the leading coffee exporters in the world until the coffee leaf disease that wiped out coffee plantations in the 1870s which were then replaced by tea, to the extent that coffee became a marginal crop.”
Coffee has been overtaken by tea to the extent that the majority of coffee grown today are remnants of older plantations or small-scale planting. Coffee never left Sri Lanka, Saqib stressed, adding that, however, it has lost its connection and ability to contribute to the global market in a meaningful way, which is what MDF is trying to remedy, and the festival is one part of this.
“In 2020, we collaborated with the private sector, facilitating the formation of the Lanka Coffee Association. We hope to see the festival become a yearly event organised by the Lanka Coffee Association in collaboration with partners like MDF and other partners to engage with stakeholders looking to see the sector grow and see Sri Lankan coffee pursue quality and value for specialty coffee,” Saqib said.
The festival will also see the launch of MDF’s new report, “Arabica Coffee Value Chain Analysis”, a one-of-a-kind, in-depth analysis into Sri Lanka’s specialty arabica coffee sector that collects information from bean to cup, charting the pathways to scale and identifying the opportunities for growth in the arabica coffee sub-sector in Sri Lanka.
Sharing her hopes for the festival and Sri Lanka’s coffee industry, Saqib said: “I was personally excited to see the industry developing, especially in the beginning of 2020. When Covid-19 hit, we were really concerned about how the sector would adapt. Coffee is a very hospitality-driven business, and it has been so encouraging to see these businesses stay afloat and continue to improve. It has also been encouraging to work with these businesses and provide them with a platform to showcase. We’re using the festival as an opportunity to talk about what comes next.”
The Sri Lanka Coffee Festival will take place on 25 January at the Shangri-La Colombo. The event will comprise a coffee symposium with presentations by national and international experts, the launch of MDF’s new coffee report, and a coffee expo with coffee tasting opportunities.
For more information or to register to attend the festival, please visit Sri Lanka Coffee Festival’s Instagram page.
Instagram: @sl.coffeefestival
