September
02, 2012
Mara —
MARA Coffee Limited in Mara Region has imported two quality coffee processing
machines from Colombia and Brazil. The machines will process wet and dry
Arabica coffee that is widely cultivated in several villages in Tarime District
in the Lake zone, according to the company's Manager Mr Raja Sekhar. "Both
machines have already arrived at the Sirari border and they will be installed
at our factory by mid September.
Our aim
is to improve the quality of coffee and enable the farmer fetch good
price," Mr Raja Sekhar said in an exclusive interview with the 'Sunday
News' . "After the machines commence production, we will be the only
company which can process both wet and dry coffees in Lake Zone," Mr Raja
Sekhar said.
The wet
coffee processing machine manufactured in Colombia has the capacity to process
20 tonnes of coffee every eight hours the same as the dry coffee drying machine
manufactured in Brazil.For years now, Mara Coffee Ltd had directly exported
both conventional and organic Tarime hard Arabica coffee to overseas markets
especially Europe.
It is
now certified to export organic coffee to the United States. "We have
maintained the highh quality of Tarime coffee for many years and the acqusition
of the machines is in line with plans by the Tanzania Coffee Board to transform
Tarime into a wet coffee processing zone", Mr Sekhar pointed out. The
company has set aside about 1.5bn/- to buy wet and dry coffee from villagers in
Tarime district.
The
company plans to distribute 150,000 coffee seedlings to hundreds of Tarime
farmers in collaboration with the Tanzania Coffee Research Institute (TaCRI)
any time from now free of charge, a move aimed to expand coffee farming in the
district. The firm has so far distributed about two million coffee seedlings
free of charge to farmers greatly increasing coffee production from 400 tonnes
in 1995 to 2,300 tonnes this year.
The
coffee regulatory board has opened a zonal office in Musoma in a bid to
supervise the development of the cash crop within coffee growing zones in the
lake zone regions in the recent years.