Melkalati is named after a name of a river that runs through the village of Tore Badiya in Abaya county, West Guji Zone. The company was officially established in 2018 and since then it has been operating in different coffee growing areas. So far the company has focus on Guji and Gedeo coffees.
The company supplies both washed and natural coffees. Their washed coffee lots are produced at their own coffee washing stations built in Tore Badiya, Worqa and Dari Kojuwa villages. This coffee is processed at Tore Badiya.
Smallholder coffee farmers in the respective villages and the surroundings deliver hand- picked coffee cherries directly to the respective coffee processing facilities owned by Melkalti Trading PLC. Once the farmers deliver the coffees, further quality improvement practice is carried out through manual labor to sort out under ripe, overripe and insect/pest damaged cherries. For both processing types, only the well-ripen red cherries remain for further processing activities.
Processing details
Hand-picked coffee cherries are taken directly from farm to coffee processing sites for sorting out under ripe, overripe and insect/pest damaged cherries. Only well ripened, red cherries remain for pulping using a locally made washed coffee processing machine called Agard. Immediately after pulping, coffee is soaked under water for 48 hours to undergo wet fermentation. During this period, water is changed every 24 hours. This round of fermentation is completed after confirming that the mucilage is completely removed through washing the parchment coffee using clean water. Lastly, clean parchment coffee is transferred to a soaking tank and stays there under water for a brief 2 to 4 hour period.
The coffee is then transferred to a skin drying stage where the parchment coffee is stirred by hand under shade. This process usually lasts from 2 to 4 hours in the morning.
Skin drying is immediately followed by the final main drying stage, where the parchment coffee is transferred on to a raised drying bed for 10 days until the bean moisture level reaches 10.0 to 10.5%
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