Fair Trade News

Published Aug 31, 2006

Ethiopia: Specialty Coffees Boost Union's Revenues 42-Fold in 4 Years

August 31, 2006
Posted to the web August 31, 2006
Hayal Alemayehu
Addis Ababa

Expanding on specialty coffee exports, the Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union has markedly raised its export revenues forty two-fold over the last four years, Union Export Division Head Ashenafi Argaw disclosed to The Daily Monitor.

Specialty coffee beans constituted 77 percent of the total coffee exports the Union shipped overseas in the ended Ethiopian fiscal, the proportion picking up 47 percentage points compared to the Union's export performance during the previous year alone, where specialty coffee beans share stood at some 30 per cent of the Union's overall export, according to Ashenafi.

Owing to an increase in its specialty coffee exports, the Union has bean able to secure higher revenues in the concluded budget year than that of the previous year, despite a 10.5 percent drop in export volume, the Export Division Head said.

According to Ashenafi, the Union has in the concluded year shipped 4,916 tones of coffee and bagged over 14.6 million USD in total export earnings, while the amount it secured from exporting a larger volume of 5487 tones of coffee in the previous year stood at 12.5 million USD.

The Union's Export Division Head said that specialty coffee beans are fetching prices nearly twice that of the conventional market and the Union will focus on expanding on the specialty market with all the efforts at its best.

The cooperatives working under the four-year old Sidama Coffee Farmers Union has produced a larger portion of premium quality coffees collected from a number of cooperatives lots functioning under the four Coffee Unions in the country, and auctioned through the Internet last Saturday by ECAFE, a US-based quality coffee promoter, where over a hundred bidders worldwide participated.

Compared with its first year performance four years ago, where it exported 180 tons of coffee and secured 323,325 USD, the Union's last year export earnings has grown over forty two-fold, while its export volume has picked up some twenty seven-fold.

The Union presently coordinates and manages the activities of 47 cooperatives consisting of 86,675 coffee farmers in the country.