Etiopia

Tamerat Alemayhu

Moplaco were founded in 1972, by Yannis Georgalis. They established themselves in the town of Dire Dawa, to the north east of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Crucially, Dire Dawa is located on the edge of the iconic Ethiopian region of Harrar, and is home to the region’s largest ECX coffee delivery centre. Harrar produces a markedly different expression of Ethiopian coffee, when compared to the regions further south, surrounding the Great Rift Valley. The climate in Harrar is much drier, resulting in very different types of vegetation dominating the landscape here, those that thrive in drier climates, such as evergreen and coniferous species. These species are much shorter in stature, resulting in much less shade for the coffee. The coffee here is also grown in a very different mode, known as Garden Coffee. In this system, coffee trees are normally planted in small numbers, often in conjunction with other crops, close to a farmers home. The trees here are afforded almost no shade, and can often be grown purely for home use. However, in Harrar, this is a popular method to grow coffee for export. Coffee in Harrar is almost always naturally processed, and along with the dry and hot climate, and the lack of shade, this means that the coffee here is often much heavier and richer than we are used to, a profile that has fallen out of the modern specialty coffee expectation. Harrar has also seen a decline in production, as many farmers elect to begin growing the popular narcotic Khat at the expense of coffee. It is for these reasons that the company chose to expand into wider Ethiopian specialty coffee, while keeping their roots in Harrar. This increased in pace when Yannis’ daughter Heleanna took over Moplaco 10 years ago, leading the company’s expansion to other areas of Ethiopia. The company invested in a large state of the art facility in Addis Ababa, to mill coffees from all over Ethiopia, and directly export while maintaining traceability. There are also processing stations in Yirgacheffe and Chelelectu, where experimental processing is carried out, and agronomy advice is given to the smallholder farmers delivering cherry.

Most recently, Moplaco purchased the Logita processing station in the town of Bensa, in the North-East of the famous Sidamo region. From here Moplaco have been providing both agricultural and processing advice to neighbouring mills, while also buying and exporting their highest quality coffees. We are proud to be involved with Heleanna’s work, an inspirational woman blazing a trail for a new level of speciality coffee in Ethiopia.