$13.2 Per LB

Pink Lemonade, Juicy, Hibiscus, Red Kiwi

Producer: Ndumberi Cooperative Society

Location: Kiambu

Varietal: SL-28, SL-34

Process: Washed

Elevation: 1800 masl

FOB Cost: $10.25kg

Our Cost: $13.65kg

*FOB cost, or Free-On-Board, is the price paid for the coffee once it is ready to ship from origin. Including but not limited to what the farmer was paid, milling, warehousing, transport, and further exporting fees.

*Our cost includes FOB price as well as any extra costs associated with the coffee when it arrives to our facility like tariffs, freight, warehousing, and financing.

Kiambu county sits adjacent to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city, and is a coffee powerhouse. Along with an extensive community of coffee mills, exporter warehouses and quality labs, the Kenya Coffee College and Coffee Research Institute (near Ruiru Town, after which the disease-resistant hybrid is named), Kiambu is also home to many of Kenya’s largest and oldest coffee estates. Because of its proximity to Nairobi, Kiambu is urbanizing quickly. Ruiru Town is Kenya’s 6th largest urban municipality and if development continues the way it has, many expect a majority-urban county in just a few years. Yet Kiambu continues to be home to a number of well established cooperative societies, such as Ndumberi FCS.

Kenya’s coffee is dominated by a cooperative system of production, whose members vote on representation, marketing and milling contracts for their coffee, as well as profit allocation. The Ndumberi processing station, or “factory” as it’s known in Kenya, has over 2600 contributing farmer members, who in addition to coffee typically also grow banana and corn, with grevillea or macadamia trees planted for shade and nutrition.

Kenya is of course known for some of the most meticulous at-scale washed processing that can be found anywhere in the world. Bright white parchment, nearly perfectly sorted by density and bulk conditioned at high elevations is the norm, and a matter of pride, even for generations of Kenyan processing managers who often prefer drinking Kenya’s tea (abundantly farmed in Kiambu and nearby Muranga county) to its coffee. Cherry is delivered each day to the Ndumberi factory by participating members, cherries are sorted for ripeness, then depulped and fermented overnight. Once fermentation is complete it is washed with freshwater in long channels and sorted by density into “P1” (the highest quality), “P2”, “P3”, and “P light”. Each density grade is dried individually on raised beds between 14 and 21 days and stored separately for conditioning on the factory property.