BURUNDI COFFEE EXPORT COMPANY
By Benjamin TURIKUBWAYO

Business plan April 2010

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

What is the product ? Burundi coffee is unknown at international market. This is not because coffee growers cannot produce a good quality; it is simply because the coffee produced is not processed to meet the market standards. Burundi coffee company will work with coffee growers to produce specialty coffee by using high quality standards in the processing of the coffee cherry then market it to roasters in the US and Europe.

What is the market size? Statistics from the International coffee organization show that there is a decrease in the coffee export in the year 2010 compared to year 2009. “World coffee exports amounted to 7.1 …show more content…

It is the main source of income for more than 600,000 households, or almost 40% population;

however, due to the lack of proper management of the coffee trees, there has been a progressive decline in production. In part, this can be attributed to the prolonged civil war and the displacement of the population; however, the main reason is the increasing competition with food crops and the declining purchasing power of coffee revenues. As the uprooting of coffee trees was banned by the government, there has been a tendency to gradually abandon the trees and plant food crops such as beans underneath the trees. Poor crop husbandry including a lack of mulching (for moisture retention and weed control) and fertilizer application have resulted in a decline in average yields to less than 1kg cherry per tree. This has been accompanied by an increasing biannual cycle of production due to the absence of re-generative pruning. This decline in production and increasing biannual cycle of production can be seen from the figures of cherry purchases for 4 washing stations in Ngozi province (North of Burundi) from 2001 to 2007.

In the 1980s, Burundi invested in quality coffee by developing 133 large washing stations, where the cherry is purchased from growers; the pulp is removed from the cherry and the remaining mucilage removed by a process of fermentation and washing. This ‘fully washed coffee’ differs from