August 14, 2024
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Factory News
The 2024 Harvest Ends at the Drying Beds
More than 450 tons of cherry came through the collection centre this season. That number matters, but the harder part was keeping the work steady when deliveries peaked: sorting quickly, pulping the same day, and making room for the next load.
The last cherry came in from the higher plots in mid-August. By then, the tanks were holding fermented parchment and the drying beds were carrying the final lots. Volume changes the pace of the factory; it does not change the basic rule. Ripe cherry is handled promptly, and parchment is turned and covered as the weather demands.
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July 20, 2024
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Infrastructure
More Drying Beds, the Same Careful Routine
The new raised beds add about 30% to our daily processing capacity. That gives the factory more room during the busiest weeks, when parchment can arrive faster than the old beds can take it.
The extra capacity came from reinvesting cooperative proceeds. The beds follow the same practical design as the earlier ones: space for air to move, drainage that works in heavy rain, and enough strength for repeated use. Nothing about the new construction removes the slow work. Parchment still has to be spread thin, turned by hand, and covered before the afternoon weather changes.
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June 18, 2024
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Member Stories
Eng. Robinson Wachira Nyambura on Building a Better Farm
It has been 2 years since Eng. Robinson Wachira Nyambura started as a member, from June 2024 and counting, and he has doubled the yield from his coffee plot. He points to ordinary work done consistently: training sessions, conversations with other farmers, and more attention to the soil.
There is no single trick behind the change. Better practice takes time to show up in a farm's numbers, and a good harvest still depends on weather and labour. Eng. Robinson's experience is useful because it is practical: what he learned through the cooperative had to survive outside the meeting room, on his own plot, season after season.
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May 10, 2024
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Coffee Education
Why SL28 and SL34 Do Not Taste the Same
The two cultivars often grow on the same hillsides, but they do not give the same cup. SL28 is usually sharper and more concentrated. SL34 tends to be rounder and sweeter. The difference is clear before anyone starts talking about scores.
Both were selected in the 1930s and both remain important to Kenyan coffee. In the factory, cultivar is only the beginning of the conversation. Ripeness, fermentation, washing, and drying can either protect those differences or blur them. Good processing does not make every lot taste identical; it gives each one a fair chance to show what it can do.
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April 5, 2024
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Sustainability
The Water Work Nobody Sees in the Cup
Fully washed coffee depends on water at nearly every early stage: floating cherry, fermenting parchment, and washing the channels. The question is not whether the factory uses water. It is what happens to that water afterward.
Our system uses collection tanks to recirculate wash water, settling ponds to separate pulp, and treatment before discharge. These are not glamorous parts of coffee processing, but they are the parts that determine whether the factory is living responsibly alongside the farms and streams around it. The work is mostly quiet, measured, and easy to overlook. It still has to be done.
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