New Zealand coffee

NZSCA reflects on World Coffee Championships

Even with the countless preparation and practice hours required to compete at world level, not every competitor will win. With the financial and mental investment high, what happens when the competition doesn’t go to plan? Stepping onto the stage with the backing of sponsors, family, friends, employers, colleagues, and customers is daunting, even more so on the world stage. With the right mindset, competitions can be richly rewarding, regardless of the result. With intuitive skills and an impressive coaching ability, Masako Yamamoto coached and travelled with 2017 and 2018 New Zealand Latte Art Champion Leo Li to the World Championships in Brazil. Masako says her background as a barista trainer gives her the invaluable skill to identify a student or staff’s strengths and weaknesses, and help bring them out. 
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Uganda

Unlimited potential of Uganda

When people ask: “How was your origin trip?” I struggle to find the right words to capture everything and do the country justice.  However, if I had to summarise Uganda in just one word, it would be “industriousness”. Kampala, the country’s capital and largest city, buzzes with insane motorcycle taxis that operate on adrenaline and blind luck. Main roads are lined on both sides by a myriad of small businesses selling everything from luscious fruits to massive bedsteads and intricate wooden coffins. In some areas it’s a contrast between sophisticated restaurants and people living in corrugated iron shacks tens of metres away. Outside the cities and towns, the pace is slower but it felt like everyone was doing something or going somewhere.
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Minas Hill

Minas Hill Coffee: Our farmers, our heroes

Minas Hill Coffee Founder Marcelo Brussi says his admiration for coffee farmers comes from his relationship with his grandfather, Francisco Brussi, who grew up working on coffee farms.  Francisco’s parents migrated from Italy to Brazil to work in coffee farms before he was born. After his father left the family when Francisco was 10, he, his mother and brother, moved to Sao Paulo. When Francisco was an adult, the State Department of Agriculture hired him to monitor coffee exports, due to his knowledge as a coffee picker and worker.
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Gabriel Oliveira

Gabriel Oliveira of Bom Jesus shares his gift

Every producer thinks their farm is special, but in Gabriel Oliveira’s opinion, owning Bom Jesus is a matter of luck and merit.  Located at Alta Mogiana biome in Brazil, Bom Jesus is a picture perfect postcard of lush terrain, symmetrical rows of coffee trees, and natural vegetation.  As a child, Gabriel recalls playing among the drying coffee on his grandparent’s farm. He grew up with first-hand appreciation that coffee production was arduous, detailed, and extremely passionate work, but it was work that fascinated him.
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Fairtrade Papua New Guinea

Fairtrade: More than a label

To Will Valverde, Fairtrade is not just about certification. It is a comprehensive system that helps coffee-producing communities build their knowledge, skills, and production capacity. “The consumer will buy a product because they want to help the farmers. But at the same time, they want to have a good quality product they can buy all the time,” Will says. “As part of our commitment to the industry, we are working closely with producer organisations to ensure that they can bring the best quality green beans possible to their buyer.”
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Cofi-Com

Cofi-Com on the ground

Over more than 30 years importing coffee to Australia from around the world, Cofi-Com has developed strong ties with its Volcafe sister companies that operate in most growing origins.  These relationships give Cofi-Com an in-depth knowledge of the requirements and capabilities of farmers in these areas. It is this on-the-ground presence that gives the trader the ability to provide a range of coffees, from commercial blends to high-end speciality, to its roasting customers.
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Scottie Callaghan

Scottie Callaghan in the fine print

While working in Hong Kong for a Chinese start-up named Holly Brown, Australian coffee professional Scottie Callaghan noticed a lack of cafés in the area offering the personalised service he was familiar with. “There was a gap in the market where there was no café offering an Australian espresso bar experience: a friendly barista, ready and prepared to make you a good cup of coffee and do so efficiently, and remember your name – all the little customer service things that are expected in Australia,” Scottie tells BeanScene.
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Ordermentum

Win-win with Ordermentum

Ordermentum, the brainchild of Adam Theobold, Founder of Beat the Q (now known as Hey You), and former Toby’s Estate Managing Director Andrew Low, is helping Australia’s food and beverage industry trade smarter. The B2B web-based ordering and payments platform streamlines a café’s ordering process, saving time and money for both the retailer and the supplier. When Adam kept hearing from café owners about a need for a platform that took the pain out of ordering and payments, he jumped at the chance to develop the solution. 
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Project Origin

Project Origin raises reputations

When Sasa Sestic first introduced carbonic maceration (CM) to the global coffee community on the 2015 World Barista Championship (WBC) stage, the industry saw the value the new processing method could offer in terms of taste and coffee quality. CM sees farmers ferment coffee in a controlled setting, allowing them to bring out complex flavours and ensure greater consistency.
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Stojo

Sto yo’ joe with Stojo

When Jeremy Sargeant walked along Kuta beach in the popular holiday destination of Bali in the early 1990s, he recalls swimming in the pristine water and walking along the beach with nothing but sand between his toes.  Upon returning to the idyllic spot in 2016, he describes a completely different scenario. “I couldn’t swim in the ocean and I couldn’t walk along the beach because of the volume of rubbish,” he says. “There were graders going up and down the beach all day long pushing rubbish into huge piles for collecting, and then dumping the rubbish into bushland. By the time the beach was cleared, the tide would bring in a fresh collection of rubbish.”
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