In­nis Fran­cis

The Caribbean Food and Bev­er­age Trade Show was launched yes­ter­day through a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort of the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion and the Caribbean Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion at Krave Restau­rant in Tarou­ba, Mara­bel­la yes­ter­day.

The four-day event is sched­uled for June 28 to Ju­ly 1 at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya, and is ex­pect­ed to at­tract mem­bers of the in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions of the Caribbean.

Speak­ing at the launch, Ra­jiv Diptee, pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Caribbean Mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion said the taste of the Caribbean is in­tend­ed to bring a pre­mi­um ex­pe­ri­ence where lo­cals can en­joy culi­nary de­lights. He said com­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, last year they iden­ti­fied with ex­hibitors and this was a way of find­ing space from what they learn from the Agro Ex­po last year.

Diptee said when the or­gan­is­ers of the event signed the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing last Au­gust, they set goals and ob­jec­tives as a team to be­come more Caribbean in na­ture, which was done with Cari­com sup­port.

“And that is what is so es­sen­tial to bring­ing in this one-of-a-kind event. Re­cent­ly, brought on by COVID-19 an ex­ac­er­bat­ed food se­cu­ri­ty has be­come ever the top­ic of the day when we con­sid­er do­mes­tic food se­cu­ri­ty. When we con­sid­er around the re­gion’s food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty and we start to look at the car­bo­hy­drate den­si­ty and what we have in­ter-re­gion­al­ly and what it is that we can think about; where we have to be able to as­sure the sup­ply and our abil­i­ty to ac­cess foods of a cer­tain qual­i­ty…”

Diptee said the ex­hi­bi­tion will have three parts—a trade show, a con­fer­ence event, and a culi­nary food fes­ti­val.

“We’re go­ing to be work­ing very close­ly with cot­tage proces­sors, and small, and medi­um mi­cro­proces­sors. We are go­ing to be work­ing with­in our sec­tor, specif­i­cal­ly food and bev­er­age…we go­ing to have com­pa­nies not just in Trinidad and To­ba­go but from with­in the re­gion, we have al­ready tar­get­ed Ja­maica, Ba­hamas, St Lu­cia, Bar­ba­dos, Suri­name as well as reach out to some of our col­leagues to show­case the avail­abil­i­ty of the prod­uct.”

He said the event is planned to be in­ter­ac­tive and to bring change and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ex­pe­ri­ence.

He said in the next two the three weeks they are ex­pect­ing con­fir­ma­tion from some of the ma­jor part­ners who would form the trade show.

George Singh’s Southex Event Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny would be re­spon­si­ble for the man­age­ment for the show.