Volcafe PNG is the only exporter to own a coffee wet mill in PNG. Since its purchase in 1995, the Lahamenegu wet mill in the Eastern Highlands has been refreshed with brand-new machinery to take PNG cherries to the next level in quality control. While most smallholders wash and process coffee themselves and bring parchment to market, Volcafe PNG has the capability to buy in cherry and control processing consistency.
 
The mill’s supply chain services smallholder farms within a 30-kilometer radius and receives freshly harvested cherries daily. In addition to adapting local producers’ mindsets to approach coffee farming as a commercial business, Volcafe PNG has also invested particular focus in building traceability programs and farmer profiles for the PNG green coffee it sources.
 
What’s especially exciting is that private ownership of a wet mill allows Volcafe PNG to experiment with other processing methods. For example, natural PNG green coffee is rarely on offer because the drying process takes up too much time and space in other wet mills. In this case, Volcafe PNG selectively sources cherries from farmers in the wet mill’s registered supply chain and allocates up to four weeks of drying time on raised beds for the cherries to process.
 
What Does Coffee From Papua New Guinea Taste Like?
The result of such meticulous sourcing and processing is a delicious lot of PNG green coffee that tastes just as unique as its production journey. The Eastern Highlands is fertile with loamy volcanic soil, and the coffee that comes through the Lahamenegu wet mill is grown at 1550masl spread across approximately 600 hectares of land.