Coffee lovers from the four corners of the globe will come together on 30 September and 1 October at the Auditorium of the Stella Polare Congress Centre in Rho-Fiera Milano. The occasion is the first Global Coffee Forum.
An international event that offers a busy programme of discussions on the future of coffee, touching on such themes as health, sustainability and solidarity, through “Oxfam Coffee4Change” coffee4change.oxfam.org, a fund-raising campaign run by the UK charity.
The initiative is promoted by the International Coffee Organization (ICO), the Ministry for Agriculture, Food and Forestry, the Italian Coffee Committee, Expo 2015 and Fiera Milano Congressi, with contributions from illy and Lavazza. Host and Oxfam are special partners for the event.
With two billion cups of the beverage drunk every day and 148 million 60-kg sacks produced each year, coffee is the fruit of the labours of some 25 million families in 56 countries around the world.
These are significant figures and they will be at the centre of the debate animated by leading international guests, including some illustrious exponents from the world of culture, research and enterprise.
They will include agriculture minister Maurizio Martina, Andrea Illy, president and chief executive of CEO illycaffè, and president of the ICO committee for the promotion and develop of the market, Giuseppe Lavazza, vice-president of Luigi Lavazza S.p.A and co-chairman of the project “Coffee and Climate Change”, Patrick Hoffer, president of the Coffee Consortium, Jean-Marc Duvoisin, chief executive of Nestlè Nespresso, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Ric Rhinehart, SCAA and Francesco Morace, president of Future Concept Lab.
On 1 October the activities of the Global Coffee Forum will coincide with the first “International Coffee Day” promoted by ICO.
On the occasion of its official proclamation, on the afternoon of 1 October, the Forum will change location and will reach its conclusion at the Expo Centre at Expo Milano 2015, where International Coffee Day will be celebrated with a big party.
Please find the full programme here (pdf file).
