Bamenda:‘Kola Coffee’ begging for industrial production

The ambition of the North West Cooperative Association (NWCA) to excel in collection, processing and marketing of coffee is not helped by ageing or obsolete transformation equipment.

The fifty year-old North West Cooperative Association, (NWCA) has survived heights and depths of all that has rocked the business of coffee production, processing and marketing in recent times. The organization which takes credit as the hope of coffee farmers in the North West Region went the extra mile in 1980 when they engaged the transformation process of roasting the crop into Arabica ground coffee for farmers to enjoy the sweat of their labour.

Six years ago, their decision to transform and brand it as “Kola Coffee” for the market became a major plus and a new experience in efforts to emerge as a leading coffee farmers’ organization. It was against this back drop that the NWCA acquired a coffee Roaster in 1980.

On-the- spot at their Mile 3-Nkwen head office; the organization’s Roaster; Achu Frederick told Cameroon Tribune that the obsolete equipment with a capacity of 60kg per hour can no more turn full circle. Worse still; there is no assurance of ready parts for the machine whose low efficiency and output does not help matters since it was bought from a third party 36 years ago. That is perhaps; why quantities of refined Kola Coffee produced is insignificant (four cartoons of 96 packets per week).

The General Manager of the NWCA, Waindim Timothy Ntam and Marketing Manager, Fonguh Peter explained that, while the cooperative works to make things happen, the channel of distribution for now remains domestic with Kola Coffee served mainly in coffee Kiosks and super markets in Bamenda.

Their commitment to produce commercial quantities is not helped by the aging equipment especially as packaging is manual for the product that is acclaimed by virtually all for its flavour as natural from the farm to the cup. From the look of things, the product, derived from organic Arabica coffee beans, is a new experience in Cameroon.

Speed brakes staring the NWCA on the face have however, not succeeded to take away its credibility in handling the produce of about 35000 coffee farmers assembled in some 43 cooperative produce market societies where preliminary quality controls are carried out after collection. The crop is later hauled from parch to green beans at the level of existing 12 Secondary Cooperative Unions.

At this level, quality controls also feature for humidity, picked, graded and bagged into vegetable oil treated bags for export. Coffee destined for export at this level also undergoes final quality controls to check humidity, check out foreign particles and do cup tasting to ascertain quality before export.

Meanwhile, coffee not meant for export is thus, sent to the NWCA for roasting.