Ethiopia taps growing coffee potential

ADDIS ABABA — In a bustling coffee processing plant filled with the aroma of top-notch Arabica coffee in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, a group of women was busy sorting out defective green coffee beans to ensure that only the finest quality beans move on to the roasting and packaging stages.

Each woman can sort defects from up to 150 kilograms of raw coffee beans each day at the Hadero coffee processing plant. The sorted green coffee beans would then pass through the inspection, roasting, grinding and packaging stages before they are sent off to the shelves of supermarkets and coffee shops in Ethiopia and around the world.

Named after a small coffee-producing town in southern Ethiopia, Hadero is among the rapidly growing list of coffee processing businesses in Ethiopia that specialize in coffee value addition, as part of a broader push to transform the country's coffee industry.