Expanding Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee in the EU

3. Jamaica and the Coffee Market

Expanding Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee in the EU Windward Commodities 30th June 2022

3.1. A story of resilience and decline Jamaica Blue Mountain (JBM) coffee is a highly successful global brand, sold as ‘the Ferrari of the coffee world’ to discerning consumers from Tokyo to Texas. While this success was rooted in a strong post-war partnership with Japan importers who took over 80% of Jamaica’s volume prior to 2008, exports have more recently diversified with a larger portion going to the US with the remaining volume going into established UK and EU distributors and emerging Asia and Middle Eastern markets. JBM green bean exports alone represented USD15.56m in revenues to the industry in 2021 driven in part by a high sustained price premium over the global market (‘C’) price. However, despite this resilience the Jamaican coffee industry has been in decline for the last decade. Part of this has been driven by natural disasters including hurricanes, drought and CLR outbreaks, but it is also a symptom of a broken business model. Yields are poor, farmers struggle to make a profit, new origins are entering the specialty coffee market and consumer and buyer tastes are changing. This has had a huge impact on the sustainability of the industry and the brand and is illustrated below from JACRA data. This shows a volume decline of 54.9% from 1,275mt in 2007 to 575mt in 2021. Associated revenues in the same period were partly mitigated by upwards pricing but still went from USD30.35m in 2007 to USD15.56m in 2021, a decline of 48.7%.

Jamaica Blue Mountain exports Volume (kg) and Value (USD) 2007-2021

$40,000,000

1,000,000 1,100,000 1,200,000 1,300,000 1,400,000 1,500,000

$35,000,000

$30,000,000

$25,000,000

200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 600,000 700,000 800,000 900,000

$20,000,000

$15,000,000

$10,000,000

$5,000,000

$-

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Volume KG

Value USD

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