Coffee spread to the highland areas of Sidamo where the trees are newer. In my home area, the trees can be 65-85 years old. Trees this mature no longer produce good, flavoursome coffee but farmers have been resistant to replanting due to the perceived interruption in their income. On a side note, in response to this issue Kerchanshe now runs a range of ...
Uraga Woreda of the East Guji Zone is one of the very few sites, where coffee is grown above the 2000masl mark.
Uraga is found at south slope of the South Ethiopian mountain escarpment, at a distance of 450 km from Addis. The topography is sloppy adulating land type with altitude range of 2000-2300asl. The daily temperature ranges between 11-25 degree Celsius. Annual rainfall is over 1500mm; some times as high as 2000mm. The soil type is reddish brown well textured nitisol with a very good structure and nutrient content.
The coffee is atypical Guji type with finest quality; flavors of lemon, green tea, sweet potato, strawberry and jasmine with a sweet, floral finish.
Currently 1295 farmers with coffee farm of about 3000ha are working with Kerchanshe Trading PLC as out-grower farmers. We receive cherries from these farmers and process it. The processing is done in 2 ways; wet and dry processing.
Our Processing unit is located in Biloya coffee region, Sonkole Haro Kebele within 100 m distance from the Sonkole River course. The unit Our local office together with 1 wet mill, 1 dry mill and 2 warehouses are located within the unit. We process about 3,000,000 red cherry annually.
For wet processing Red coffee cherries are taken to the pulping machine (which removes the fruity part from the parchment). The next step is fermenting the parchment by soaking in fermentation pond for 36hours. The purpose of this fermentation is to remove the sugary mucilage from the parchment. Following the fermentation process the parchment is get washed by human power.
For dry Processing we collect red cherries and leave place it on raised drying beds to get dried by sun in open space. In some cases when there is continuous rain we use artificial drier. After cherries get dried we take it to huller machine were the coffee husk is get removed.