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Buying the best beans: Coffee exporters in Ethiopia are only permitted to buy coffee from the auction centres of either Addis Ababa or Dire Dawa. These auctions run 5 days weekly and an Ambassa representative is always in attendance. At the auction centres prior to bidding exporters are able to inspect a 300-gram sample of each truck lot of coffee on offer and the Coffee and Tea Authority report as regards its cup characteristics. Ambassa buys the best coffees on auction!
Once coffee is purchased at auction it is brought to our processing factory. Coffee is weighed, paid for, and cup tested so that we can accurately determine an ideal customer for our purchase. It is then stored until a contract for its sale is secured. Note that we store all our washed coffee in parchment in order to preserve its freshness.
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Inspecting coffee bought at auction
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Deciding upon the best coffee for our customer: Once a contract for sale of coffee is secured we determine the perfect coffee for our customer by cupping samples in our liquoring unit. We will have already discussed our customer's requirements with them so that we know the taste profile they require. We find that a close relationship with our customers makes the task of determining the type of coffee they want far easier! Once we have selected what we believe to be an ideal coffee, a pre-shipment sample is sent to our customer for their approval.
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Cup testing: Mr. Wetherell and Mr. Assefa with Mrs. Melka, our liquoring unit supervisor.
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The rigorous quality standards maintained in our processing factory: Ambassa maintains a labour intensive operation. Pre-cleaning equipment (gravity feed, stone-eliminator, catador) to hand picking on belts by two shifts of some 400 women workers ensure that imperfect beans are removed from coffee that has been selected for our customers. Supervisors constantly monitor the standard of coffee coming off the belts. Sample coffee lots are drawn every hour and regularly liquored to ensure that the entire batch of coffee is of the same high quality standard expected by our customer. Once an entire batch of coffee has been cleaned we draw a representative sample and compare it to our customer's requirements to ensure they will be pleased.
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Mr. Alemu, Mr. Ibrahim, Mr. Birhanu with stone-eliminator
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Labour intensive: hand pickers removing impurities.
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Ethiopian Arabica Coffee ready for export to you …
Factory supervisors, Mr. Gelan, Mr. Getahun, Mr. Yusuf, with Ambassa coffee ready for export ….
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Before coffee leaves Addis or Dire Dawa for Djibouti, it is checked by Coffee and Tea Authority inspectors who are tasked with ensuring that Ethiopian exporters actually export the type of coffee described on their export cleaning certificate! With a clean bill of health our drivers transport our coffee to Djibouti. Ambassa maintains a trucking fleet which helps us to ensure our coffee is not damaged en route to the shipping port of Djibouti. It is then loaded onto a shipping line of your preference and begins its sea journey to you.
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