As the morning temperatures drop in Luang Prabang, Saffron Coffee Company’s farmers in over 85 villages across northern Laos are eagerly watching their coffee trees. They are looking for when the fruit turns the perfect crimson colour that signals it is ripe for harvest.
This year it can’t come quick enough with demand for Saffron coffee meaning they are quickly running out of the amazing northern Lao coffee that their customers know and love.
In the mountains surrounding Luang Prabang, the harvest begins in late October or early November each year and will finish in February. Saffron’s coffee promoters will travel multiple times to each village to purchase the high-quality Arabica cherries that will become the pride of Saffron Coffee the next year.
“We believe strongly in compensating our farmers for the effort they put in and ensuring they have a sustainable living for their hard work,” says Brendan Pont, the Roasted Coffee Sales Manager for Saffron Coffee.
Saffron Coffee pays their farmers above the market value for the high-quality coffee they produce. As a “profit for purpose” company, Saffron Coffee is also focussed on developing the skills of farmers and provides free seedlings each year to their existing farmers or new farmers, who want to join the growing number of northern Lao families who now earn a sustainable living from selling their coffee to Saffron.
“This past year we had requests for 20,000 more seedlings than what we could provide, it’s exciting to see the coffee production expanding in the North of Lao,” Mr Pont said.
Mr Pont is also excited by a project that Saffron is conducting as part of the Reinforcement and Expansion of Coffee Sector in Laos (Recosel) initiative, in which they are building and training villages to operate processing facilities in areas that were previously too distant for coffee cherries to get back to Saffron’s processing plant in Luang Prabang.
“This project will allow us to broaden the number of villages we can access coffee from, and also help them have another source of income,” he said. Saffron is in the process of building their first satellite processing centre, and are partnering with the Wildlife Conservation Society, who will begin the construction of a second site soon.
If you want to find out more about the work of Saffron Coffee, they offer customers the opportunity to experience how the crimson cherries become a cup of liquid gold.
The “Cherry to Cup” tours will take you from the Saffron Espresso Brew Bar and Roastery on the Mekong in downtown Luang Prabang to their processing plant situated on the way to Kuang Si falls. It is here that you will experience how they take their organic, shade grown, environmentally sustainable coffee cherries, and process them to end up being the latte that you love.
You can find out more about the tours at the Espresso Brew Bar and Roastery overlooking the Mekong River, or their Alley café in the heart of the guesthouse area in Ban Houaxiang.
For more information, please visit: www.saffroncoffee.com
