China Specialty Coffee Expo Postponed as Coronavirus Spreads

Coffee being grown in China’s Yunnan province. Daily Coffee News photo by Connie Blumhardt.

China’s largest coffee conference has been postponed due to the ongoing outbreak of coronavirus.

Organizers of the China International Specialty Coffee Expo 2020 have announced an indefinite postponement of the event, which was scheduled to take place March 18-22 in Pu’er City, China.

Located in a mountainous region of the Yunnan province in southern China, Pu’er is much nearer to the borders of Myanmar, Laos or Vietnam than it is to the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, which is some 1,100 miles away in the city of Wuhan.

Yet as more cases of the potentially deadly virus are appearing on a daily basis throughout China and other parts of the world — including the first person-to-person case confirmed in the United States today — organizers of the coffee expo have decided to halt the event until further notice.

This was to be the third year of the China International Specialty Coffee Expo, which under the continued organizational support of the Yunnan Coffee Exchange went by the name Pu’er International Specialty Coffee Expo for its first two years. Roast magazine’s Connie Blumhardt attended the inaugural event in 2018.

Here’s the full announcement from the expo’s organizers:

The 2020 China Specialty Coffee Expo, previously scheduled to be held in Pu’er City China March 18 – 22, is being postponed to a later date as a result of the current coronavirus outbreak. At this time the organizers are first and foremost concerned about the safety of their employees, families and friends and the welfare of foreign visitors to China. The organizers will re-schedule the Expo for a time in the near future.