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International coffee day: 1st October celebrates the most popular beverage worldwide. The theme for 2019 is sustainability

Istituto Espresso Italiano (IEI) launches the new international brand to distinguish "Italian Espresso": it can already be found in ove 20,000 coffee shops across Italy

Around the world, 3 billion coffees are consumed every day. Espresso is recognised by everyone as an exceptional, authentic Italian product. In Italy, the coffee industry employs over 7 thousand people just to produce the coffee itself, not to mention its turnover, with a revenue of around 4 billion euros per year.

Istituto Espresso Italiano (IEI) aims to educate both the barista and the consumer in a sector that, for Italians, is the most important aspect of the agri-food industry, thanks to the hard work carried out on a daily basis.

International Coffee Day. Every year, on 1st October, people gather together to celebrate coffee and make millions of people from around the world - from farmers, roasters and baristas, to café owners and many more - aware of the hard work needed to create and serve the drink we all love. The initiative, which has reached its fifth year in 2019, is promoted by the International Coffee Organization. Every year, a specific theme is chosen. This year, our thoughts go out to the millions of farmers employed in cultivating coffee plants around the world. In fact, coffee has never been so popular, with about 3 billion cups being consumed every day: a number that continues to rise. However, those who cultivate coffee seem to be earning less and less.

Sustainability goes hand in hand with training. This year World Coffee Day on 1st October is dedicated, as mentioned, to sustainability which, for Istituto Espresso Italiano (IEI), means training both workers and consumers. "Those who learn how to assess and recognise the quality of coffee are willing to pay a higher price, hopefully supporting the purchase of raw materials, which also guarantees growers a better profit," said IEI president Luigi Morello. “Today, those who cultivate coffee are faced with a dramatic fall in prices, which puts their families’ quality of life at risk as well as their children’s future.”

“As a ‘B Corporation’, each year we invest a significant amount in training through the companies participating in our program, involving hundreds of baristas, both in terms of courses and events,” Morello continued. “We are planning to extend the scope of these actions by involving more consumers, for whom we already thinking about specific initiatives in 2020.”

Italian Espresso: a brand used to distinguish it worldwide. IEI has also started to redetermine its own marketing activities in order to strengthen its actions, starting with the brand, whose design was entrusted to Robilant Associati, a brand advisory leader in Italy. "The new identity reflects Italian traits closely linked to coffee: the passion and gesture, iconographically summarised by the kiss - said Roger Botti, general and creative director of Robilant Associati. “The kiss is an element which gives substance to the concept of love, transforming it into a tangible, simple, daily, Italian gesture such as an espresso. This style gives the new IEI a more striking, empathic and universal expression, given that the pleasure of coffee is universal". And the brand will undoubtedly be recognisable, even by Italian consumers, in the 700 establishments, especially cafés, certified by the IEI and in over 20,000 Italian cafès that serve blends certified with the brand.

Making coffee in Italy. The Italian coffee industry is one of the greatest industrial, food & beverage sectors across Italy. In the Italian coffee sector there are over 800 coffee roasters with around 7,000 employees. Its 2017 sales turnover came to 3.9 billion euros, 1.35 billion of which came from exports. Italy boasts the third highest export volumes of coffee in all its forms, after Germany and Belgium. In 2017, exports of roasted coffee, according to data from the Italian Coffee Committee, reached the equivalent of 249,000,000kg of green coffee: this was a 5% increase compared to 2016. By analysing the historical data of the Italian Coffee Committee over the past 10 years, one can conclude that exports of roasted coffee have more than doubled. Italian exports of roasted coffee exceeded 1,350 million euros in 2017.