MALAYSIA: Coffee And Tea Meeting

TEA and coffee industries trade show Cafe Malaysia 2016 drew more than 10,000 visitors during the three-day exhibition at the Matrade Exhibition and Convention Centre recently.

Taking place just eight months after its inaugural trade show back in May last year, Cafe Malaysia, which was organised by Conference and Exhibition Management Services (CEMS), was launched by the Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade) chief executive officer Datuk Dzulkifli Mahmud.

“It is going to be a highly challenging year, but we are forecasting about RM20mil of trade sales for this year,” said Malaysia Specialty Coffee Association president Victor Leong.

“But I believe that drinking coffee or tea is a recession-proof activity, it is ingrained in your lifestyle,” he added.

Leong explained that the date for the three-day trade show had been brought forward, so that three national competitions could be held simultaneously – the Brewer’s Cup, Latte Art Championship and Barista Championships.

Just Want Coffee’s Wong Li Ning, JWC Global’s Eng Boon Hong and VCR’s Koay Zizheng won the respective competitions.

Both Wong and Koay will be going to Dublin, Ireland for their World Championship categories, while Eng will compete in Shanghai, China for the World Latte Art Championship 2016.

CEMS general manager Steven Tan said the number of exhibitors this year has grown from 73 booths last year to 102.

Dzulkifli said he has fond memories of the coffee culture in Europe when he was living in Italy.

“All said, the Malaysian coffee scene is growing and you have local brands making inroads overseas in Dubai and Shanghai.

“These brands started as small-to-medium enterprises and industries. We are also helping local companies participate in several overseas food trade shows,” said Dzulkifli.

He added that Matrade and the International Trade and Industry Ministry would do their part by helping to provide market access through the Asean Economic Community framework, which just came into being on Jan 1, and also through the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” said Dzulkifli.

For exhibitor Dankoff Coffee’s marketing manager Jessie Cheong, this year’s crowd was better, as was the number of exhibitors.

“A lot of new people came in after seeing the first exhibition and I can also see a lot of new faces from the trade side coming in and querying about our coffee and equipment,” said Cheong.