KK Coffee Festival Dec 1
KOTA KINABALU: A group of committee members from Borneo Cafe Alliance (BCA), a unit under the Federation of Sabah Industries (FSI) led by its president, Datuk Mohd Basri Abd Gafar met Deputy Chief Minister cum Minister of Industrial Development Datuk Seri Panglima Raymond Tan Shu Kiah at his office in conjunction with their upcoming Second KK Coffee Festival which will be held on December 1 at Suria Sabah Shopping Mall here.
The purpose of the meeting is to invite the minister as the guest of honour to officiate at the event.
“Borneo Cafe Alliance aspires to be the industry body representing the interests of the independent cafes and related food and beverage business in Borneo Island. This will include subscribing to a code of conduct and ethics for industry players, requiring them to uphold professional standard of presentation,” Basri said when introducing BCA to the minister.
“The Alliance also provides a platform for cafe business owners and coffee professionals to meet, exchange information and share knowledge by organizing activities such as the upcoming Second KK Coffee Festival. We will have participants from Specialty Coffee Cafe relevant coffee suppliers and so on,” said Frankie Liew, chairman of BCA.
“Our BCA team is now focusing on coffee bean planting research. As most of our cafe owners were importing their coffee beans from overseas, with the success story of Tenom Coffee, we are assured that Sabah can be a suitable place for other species of coffee bean plantation too,” added Mohd Basri.
Raymond agreed with the observation presented by the BCA team in which to focus on upstream activity when the downstream is booming.
On the other hand, through the promotion of upstream coffee planting industry, it will create jobs for the people and provide a sustainable coffee industry supply chain in the state.