Embogo Natural: Sucafina Originals

Embogo’s unique taste profile evokes the diverse landscapes of the region where coffee is produced. From the mighty snow-capped Rwenzori mountains to the beautiful, lush savannah of the plains, the diverse ecosystems where this coffee is grown provide ideal conditions for cultivating sweet, dense coffees.

Embogo’s accessibility and high-quality is due to our vertically integrated supply chain, which enables us to select the best cherry and meticulous process it for these lots. The resulting consistency and quality is hard to resist.

The remarkable quality of this coffee is a direct result of high altitudes and fertile soil of the regions in which it is grown. Coffee is usually the primary cash crop for farmers, but most also intercrop their trees alongside plantains, bananas and fruit. This intercropped produce will make up a substantial part of the family’s diet for the year.

Continuing our commitment to sustainability, we are taking every possible measure to ensure that our operations are empowering all stakeholders involved. We’ve registered 8,000+ farmer households, to whom we provide assistance in Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) trainings, certification and various other benefits.

Farmers selectively handpick ripe cherry and deliver it to washing stations or supply chain agents near them. Cherry is carefully sorted at intake where under- and over-ripes, as well as any foreign matter, are removed. 

Quality assurance begins as soon as farmers deliver their cherry. All cherry is floated in small buckets as a first step to check quality. After floating, cherry is transported to raised drying beds.

Each table has dedicated workers focusing exclusively on caring for drying cherry. Workers rake cherry frequently to promote even drying. They also keep track of the weather to make sure cherry is properly protected from rain, excess moisture and too much sunlight. Each table has a traceability tag with the lot info.

When drying is completed, cherry pods are delivered to our dry mill in Kampala. The mill has the capacity to mill smaller lots separately to help preserve quality and traceability.

Historically, though Arabica coffee has been grown in Western Uganda for decades, a lack of washing station infrastructure has meant that almost all of this coffee was home-processed and sold as Drugar (Uganda Arabica).

In recent years, we’ve seen that Western Uganda can produce high-quality coffee that can be on par with the neighboring countries of Rwanda and Burundi. There has been an increasing interest amongst traders and exporters to invest in washing station infrastructure and produce the Fully washed coffees that are in high demand on the global market.

Sucafina in Uganda (UGACOF) has been one of the pioneers identifying this opportunity and has made bold investments. Today, we own several coffee washing stations in the region and are rapidly expanding our production capacity of high-grade Arabica coffee.

Our partner, UGACOF/Sucafina Uganda is committed to improving quality in Uganda by building new washing stations and infrastructure and training personnel in the region. Collaborations with our FarmerHub program and our sustainability partner, the Kahawatu Foundation, are building upon our work to expand farmers’ access to better resources and better training. Our connections to our more established operations in nearby Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya offer us advice and a perspective steeped in a familiarity with East Africa.

The bulk of our work in Uganda is focused in the West, near the Rwenzori Mountains. The biggest difference between East (Mount Elgon) and West (Rwenzori) is that Mount Elgon is a more established and competitive market. We are excited to be at the forefront of the drive for enhancing coffee production infrastructure, developing the industry and becoming reliable partners for farmers in the Rwenzori Mountain region.

It is clear to us that the potential in this region might exceed our expectations and even the potential of the popular Mount Elgon region. With an ever-growing demand for high quality Arabicas and a sustained interest from roasters and coffee drinkers in the East African origins, we are very confident that, with diligence and effort, Western Ugandan coffees will be able to take their place alongside the other great East African coffees. ​

While the scale of work in regions like this can sometimes be overwhelming, we have a clear plan that steadily increases coffee quality.

Our first step is the one that leads to the most immediate and noticeable improvement: harvesting techniques. Due to a long history of home-processing and a lack of incentive for high quality, harvesting in the region is often semi- or entirely non-selective. Thanks to our extended network of cherry collection sites, we meet with farmers every day during the harvest season and can give real-time feedback that can impact the quality of the next day’s harvest. At the collection sites, we can insist on higher levels of care and reward meticulous picking. Though we’re still in the early years, we have seen a clear difference in quality from one year to another and even from the first week of the harvest to the last.

Future steps will include working with farmers to improve their access to materials and knowledge of better farming practices. This means making fertilizer more accessible, encouraging farmers to plant shade canopies and more. We’re planning on building demonstration plots, input access sites across the region and training a new generation of skilled washing station staff. We know it will take time, but we have a strategy and are committed to realizing this vision.