About This Coffee
The Paduak regional coffee is a selection from both Ywangan and Pyin Oo Lwin producing regions. Paduak refers to a locally growing flower. These coffee regions are roughly 100km apart and are divided by an administrative border. Pyin Oo Lwin is part of the Mandalay division; Ywangan lies in the Southern Shan division.
Pyin Oo Lwin
Coffee cultivation in the Pyin Oo Lwin region mainly takes place on private estates, usually between 80 to 160 hectares in size. These farms sit at altitudes around 1200-1300masl. Some of the farms have their own cherry processing setup. Others send their cherry to the central mill of the Mandalay Coffee Group (MCG) in Pyin Oo Lwin. Predominant varieties in this region are SL34, S795 and Costa Rica.
Ywangan
In Ywangan, producers are small-holder growers, operating coffee gardens of around 1 hectare. Predominant varieties are Catuai (80%), Caturra, S795, Costa Rica and San Ramon. Each village block collects its coffee and sends it to the MCG mill for processing. Next to coffee, these smallholders produce subsistence crops and tea on their land. The region is slightly higher than Pyin Oo Lwin, with average altitudes around 1,300-1,600masl. The terrain here is more mountainous and rugged than around Pyin Oo Lwin. Small-scale village agriculture, coffee blocks and native forest characterize the region.
Cultivation
Padauk' takes its name from a flower found in Pyin Oo Lwin and Ywangan. For locals, it symbolizes the beginning of a new season. The first blossoms coincide with the beginning of the rainy season, and the Burmese new year celebration called "Thingyan". This is also the beginning of the coffee export season where coffee start shipping from the port of Yangon.
Ywangan and Pyin Oo Lwin are roughly 100 km apart, sitting at high altitudes (around 1,300 meters above sea level on average). In these 2 regions, coffee is usually grown among other subsistence crops and tea. The terrain is mountainous and rugged and the landscape is characterized by small-scale village agriculture, coffee blocks and native forest.
These northern regions have ideal conditions for producing specialty coffee. Rainfall is properly distributed throughout the year, with a marked dry season in December and January. The harvest season runs from December to April in Pyin Oo Lwin. In Southern Shan around Ywangan, most of the harvest ends in March.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Coffee cherries from Ywangan are transported to Pyin Oo Lwin for centralized wet milling, drying and dry-milling.
Coffee in Myanmar
Though coffee has been grown in Myanmar since 1885, the isolationist policies of the post-independence period had limited coffee growing and processing infrastructure. More recent initiatives have focused on expanding coffee infrastructure and opening the country’s economy through coffee exports.
Coffee started to become a larger focus in Myanmar in the 1980s, when the government partnered with the UN to start a project aimed at replacing illegal poppy production (for opium) with coffee trees.
The focus on coffee grew in 2015 when a partnership project with Winrock International and the Coffee Quality Institute sought to address one of the biggest challenges Myanmar’s coffee industry faces. By helping farmers begin more intensive sorting and grading, the project helped farmers achieve higher quality coffee and to sell on the specialty market.
We have witnessed the incredible potential of coffee in Myanmar. In just a few years’ time, coffee scores jumped from the low-70s to the mid-80s. With such quick improvements, imagine what another 5 to 10 years of educational outreach and improving supply chains with could do.