Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Trabocca Office Addis

Abraham of Trabocca gave us a warm welcome at their offices in Addis Ababa Ethiopia.

It was very interesting to hear about their initiatives to improve coffee quality, increase the farmer's income, detect and harvest new single origins and work together with specialised coffee company's around the globe.

The endless efforts of Menno Simons and the Dutch government have resulted in many happy Ethiopian coffee farmers and their family's and satisfied coffee amateurs. The average Ethiopian bean quality from Trabocca coffee bags is way higher than what we see from the Antwerp coffee trading company's.
One of their interesting projects is the OCR ; Operation Cherry Red. Very simply it's the picking of only the reddest cherry growing at the tree. It sounds simple, but for most farmers it means much more work. Luckily Trabocca is ready to pay for these extra efforts and of course we, coffee lovers, are ready to pay extra for extra quality as well.
A must read article about Trabocca's OCR project is this one at CoffeeGeek.

For the moment they only talk about something like 20 lots of 25 to 50 bags per location of washed naturals.

For the rest Trabocca's main objectives are
- quality first
- keep beans from different origins/farms separate
- double cupping to secure quality standards

With the soon upcoming efforts like vacuum packing, cotton bags (around the jute) and, new for me, Grain Pro Bags and Aluminium foil packing, the future of Trabocca and their Ethiopian coffee farmers seems to be guaranteed.

Looking forward to taste all Trabocca specialty's....

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