sell together, grow together - coffee through community

Ambe microstation was built in 2019 when the farmers wanted to come together so they can have greater access to the market. Their partnership with Zombo made it easier for them to access this market information.

Ambe microstation has different pillars that strength their vision. At a household level, they want to use the income from coffee to send their children to school. They want to learn more about rest of the value chain in great detail. Working together has improved their morale and it has other advantages such as saving schemes, more participation from women in the community. They believe they can reap the benefits of these initiatives by sticking together as a collective. Zombo's community based consultants have been supporting the microstation through training and capacity building.

This group also faces it's challenges together. One of the key issues in this locale is the lack of fences and not having enough financial resources to buy and build them. This triggers intruders to steal the coffee from storage which is a major threat especially with limited yield due to extreme weather change. They also lack good pruning equipment which slows them down. All these challenges are connected directly to the lack of finance during the off season that limit the group from making infrastructure improvements.

Despite these obstacles, their love for coffee has inspired them to keep growing this crop. Thanks to income from coffee, their children can attend school. It has enabled them to by land, food. They also love drinking coffee which continues to spark the interest for them to grow it.

CULTIVARS

Most of the coffee grown in the Alur Highlands of north-west Uganda is SL14, a variety developed by Scott Laboratories in Kenya and promoted by the Uganda Coffee Development Authority. There is also some Bourbon, which comes from nearby DR Congo, where it dominates.

elevation

1480 meters

NOTABLE

This group encourages women to produce coffees and is complimented by the trainings regarding various aspects of gender dynamics in the coffee value chain by Vivian and her team as part of the future proof coffee collective.

PROCESSING

After harvesting, farmers take their coffee to the nearby microstation, which produces fully washed coffee. Hand sorting is done immediately to select the best quality cherries. Once the hand sorting of green, overripe, and diseased cherries is completed, the quality executives at each microstation are allowed to proceed with floating to ensure they obtain the best quality red ripe cherries.
The red ripe cherries are then taken to the pulping machine to remove the red skin and transform them into parchment. The beans are carefully placed in fermenting containers or buckets filled with water, where they undergo a fermentation process for 24 to 36 hours to remove the sticky mucilage. After fermentation, the beans are washed thoroughly with more water.
The executive team conducts a second round of hand sorting to remove beans damaged during the pulping process. The wet, high-quality beans are then transferred to a drying table, shade, or tarpaulin for proper drying until they reach the required moisture level of 12% to 13%, which qualifies them as good parchment. The hulling of parchment to obtain green beans is carried out at the ZCP factory.

TASTIFY™ CUPPING NOTES

*Browse through our Tastify Archives on Google Drive.*

The price you pay for Ambe microstation's fully washed coffee p/kg. We agreed on this price directly with the farmers, disregarding the volatile US Coffee C price.
The microstation buys red cherries from the farmers. They process it and then send the dry coffee (in parchment form) to Zombo for final milling, sorting for it to be made to export grade. Farm gate in this case includes price paid to the farmer and the primary processing done by the microstation.
Zombo mills the coffee at Jukia hill and then sorts it to export grade. Further, they are also responsible for all the processes involved in exporting the coffee from Uganda to the Netherlands.
International shipping from Nebbi (Port of loading - Mombasa, Kenya) to Rotterdam, Netherlands. It is inclusive of freight, customs, insurance and warehousing costs.
Average financing cost owed to (mostly social) lenders. This ensures immediate payment to the farmers when the coffee leaves the farm or port.
A standard TSU premium on all coffees designated exclusively to accelerate farmers’ own regenerative agriculture project. Another € 0.06 is included in the final price as part of the basic income project being carried out at Zombo coffee partners in cooperation with Eight Network and This Side Up. Read more about this project here
This Side Up compensation for spending time and resources importing this coffee. Our work includes year-round contact with producers, managing export, shipping, import, warehousing, grading, sampling, finding and keeping roasting partners for Zombo. € 1,65 is This Side Up’s Model 1 markup. For a full overview of our modular margin construction, see the Trade Models page