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Tanzania: Mara imports quality machines to revive coffee industry


Daily News

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.
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