(Business in Cameroon) - According to statistics provided by the Inter-professional Cocoa and Coffee Council (CICC), Cameroonian producers exported, in 2013, 187 tonnes of “washed coffee”, meaning coffee beans that are extracted fresh, then cleaned, having a particular flavour that is coveted by “niche” markets. “One of the producers of this type of coffee confessed, happily, that he successfully sold last year’s harvest  with an additional profit of 400 dollars (200,000 FCfa) per tonne though each tonne already costs approximately 2,000 dollars (one million FCfa),” explains Omer Gatien Malédy, the CICC Executive Secretary.

According to the CICC representative, for at least two years now, Cameroon has been one of the “pioneers in washed Robusta coffee […] For a long time, Arabica coffee was more commonly washed. Our country is one of the first to have started washing Robusta coffee,” he confessed. Since then, Robusta coffee-washing factories have opened in Santchou (West), Mouambong (between the coastal and south-western regions) and Angossas (in the east).

The Arabica coffee-washing factories are now installed in such towns as Bello (north-west) Bafoussam, Kouptamo, and Bandjoun, all situated in western Cameroon. The first national producer of washed coffee, West Hills Farms, has exported 68 tonnes of washed coffee during the last season.