Jamaica increased coffee imports by two-thirds to US$4.4 million (J$700 million) in 2025, which offset a shortfall in local production of premium Blue Mountain coffee caused by successive hurricanes.
“The importation is to meet this variance between local demand and local production,” according to Managing Director of Coffee Traders Limited Jason Sharp, in response to Financial Gleaner queries.
Sharp added that the island should “pray” for no storms this year, warning that imports would otherwise fill the void left by falling local production.
Coffee Traders operates an integrated business spanning cultivation, processing, and retail. Locally, the company runs roughly seven Café Blue locations across Jamaica, and it exports coffee globally, ranking among the largest coffee exporters in the country. Like its peers, the company uses imported beans for its cafés, as well as for blending commodity beans with premium beans for export. The trade distinguishes between 100 per cent Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee products and Jamaica Blue Mountain blended products.
Jamaica sourced roughly 25 per cent of its coffee imports from the United States, followed by Mexico at 15 per cent and Colombia at 10 per cent. The remainder came from Vietnam, India, the United Kingdom, Canada, Peru, Thailand, Barbados, China, and others.
TRADE BALANCE
The fall in exports and rise in imports narrowed the trade balance towards a five-year low. Experts blamed back-to-back hurricanes in 2024 and 2025 amid constant demand.
“This was particularly evident following the impact of Hurricanes Beryl and Melissa, which created supply gaps for both domestic consumption and export commitments,” according to Dr Norman Grant, president of the Jamaica Coffee Exporters Association, in a recent Financial Gleaner interview.
The trade balance stood at US$19.1 million in 2025 — the difference between exports of US$23.6 million and imports of US$4.4 million, according to United Nations data analysed by the Financial Gleaner. This is an improvement on the US$16 million recorded in 2024, though both years remain below the previous low of US$16.4 million in 2020, at the onset of the pandemic.
Dr Grant added that weather affects both the quantity and quality of coffee produced per box.
“From a box of cherry coffee, we usually get 9.0 pounds of green beans, but due to the effects of climate change and bean density, this is now down to as low as 7.5 pounds,” Dr Grant said.
Blue Mountain coffee production stood at 300,000 boxes of cherry coffee in 2023-24, but Grant expects output to fall by 138,000 boxes in the 2025-26 crop year.
“This is projected to represent approximately US$15 million, or approximately J$2.4 billion, in lost export revenues,” Dr Grant said.
Jamaica exported one-third of the 2024 crop to Japan, one-quarter to the United States, and 8.0 per cent to China, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, Barbados, St Lucia, and Trinidad & Tobago.
The global coffee market was valued at US$72 billion in 2025, according to UN data.
luke.douglas@gleanerjm.com
