Now in it’s fourth year, The CSR Sugar Golden Bean Roaster Competition & Conference has attracted over seven hundred entries from Australia’s 330 coffee roasters, making it one of the biggest coffee roasting competitions in the world. This year’s winning roaster was
Di Bella Coffee, a national coffee roaster originating from Brisbane. The team from Di Bella were part of the one hundred roasters at the event in the coastal resort town of Port Macquarie, in New South Wales.

Master Roaster at Di Bella,  Anne Cooper was at the ready to except the trophy and the honour of being the best at her craft amongst her peers. Company Principle Philip Di Bella gave an inspirational speech to the caffeine primed audience about passion and people. Phillip is no newcomer to success having created one of the fastest growing coffee businesses in the country and winner of the BRW Young Business People’s Award.

For the first time this year a Silver and Bronze placing were also given for the ultimate CSR Sugar “Golden Bean” Award.  It was Queensland’s lucky night with Silver going to Coffee Secret and Bronze to Arabica Coffee both southern Queensland roasteries.

 KISS Marketing was overwhelmed by the entries in this year’s event.  The coffees tested over the weekend were made by world class barista champions, David Makin and Tim Adams both Australian Champion barista’s. The judges at the event were a selection of coffee roasters, international green bean brokers and coffee growers. The event judging was overseen by Justin Metcalf,  Head Judge for the World Barista Championships and Head Roaster for Daily Roast Coffee in Melbourne.

The CSR Golden Bean also hosted educational seminars looking at Marketing, Green Bean Procurement and Roaster Maintenance. The Key Note speaker was the passionate Geoff Watts from Intelligentsia, a third wave coffee business out of America. Geoff took the keen audience through his journey of the new third wave coffee movement looking at the ethical trends within the coffee industry and how roasters can support the third world coffee growing nations.

The weekend was topped off by some beautiful Port Macquarie weather which assisted the smooth running of the networking functions which included a cocktail evening, a beach party and the Awards dinner. Many of the roasters took some extra time after the event to have a break and get some rest time before heading back to the daily grind of roasting and marketing their products.

KISS Marketing is looking forward to an even bigger event in 2010 and would like to thank all of the participating roasters for their ongoing support.  With the help of major sponsors CSR Sugar the 8.5 billion dollar coffee industry can now reward its main contributors for their efforts in growing this exciting industry.

The slogan of this year’s event was “Get Roasted” which was very appropriate for the heat wave temperature during the competition which made all the more reason to head to the beach at the end of the day.