PNG Coffee goes places — from Helsinki to Rarotonga
Sections of the capital city of Castries should expect a facelift, as one part of a new tourism enhancement project funded by the World Bank.
The official launch of the project took place in Saint Lucia, last week, before a gathering of 70 persons.
The Project is funded to the tune of 26 million US dollars, with three (3) beneficiary countries. Of this total budget, Saint Lucia is allotted 15 million US dollars, Grenada 6 million and St Vincent and Grenadines 5 million.
Patrick Killoran is one of Pacific Trade Invest New Zealand’s colourful clients. The tall gangly Australian has been operating his coffee business in Mt Hagen, Papua New Guinea for several years. But in the past two or three years, he has stepped up his game.
In 2016, Mr Killoran was invited to attend PTI NZ’s Path to Market delegation to Auckland’s Pasifika Festival with a small group of PNG business entrepreneurs. He was also then invited to attend the Fine Food Auckland show followed by Food Show Australia in Melbourne and the SIAL 2016 in Paris and London’s Caffe Culture in 2017 (which he’s planning to go back to this year.)
Since then Mr Killoran has spent time consolidating his efforts and doing the things he could manage. 2017 was a challenging year. But he made it through and continued to grow his business, slowly but surely.
He now has regular customers in Fiji where he is exporting monthly as also to the Cook Islands. He revitalised a coffee contact in Holland after being at SIAL 2016 and now has regular shipments to Finland. PNG Coffee sold in Finland – who knew!
Although he also exports to Australia and New Zealand, amounts are relatively small. Mr Killoran also has a great upmarket café in Mt Hagen and even if the visitor numbers are relatively low he remains optimistic.
The biggest challenges he faces are ongoing costs of freight, making transporting his coffee from PNG to international markets such as Australia and New Zealand expensive. Infrastructure is also a challenge. It’s tough going but Mr Killoran keeps ploughing forward.