By: Carlos G. Reyes Movilla – Director of
Certifications
The DAABON Group has been exporting coffee for more than 25 years. A lot has changed over this time, as the group started out as a merchant buying and exporting coffee from the Magdalena Coffee Growers Cooperative (CAFIMAG). Subsequently, and breaking commercial paradigms, in the mid-1990s DAABON managed to successfully export roasted, ground and packaged coffee to the US. Shortly after this the group started to export green coffee to Europe and Japan, through a company it named Eco-Bio Colombia SAS, and its international offices established in Japan, the US and Europe.
By the end of the 2000s DAABON had consolidated its investment
in the coffee sector through the purchase of three coffee plantations in
the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Towards the end of the 2000s, the dominant
players in the Colombian coffee sector had changed, and although DAABON
continued
its coffee production and commercial activities uninterrupted, the group
subsequently
outsourced its export operations to third parties. This decision was
reversed
in the 2020-2021 harvest, whereby the group once again exported
directly.
Based on all this experience described above, Eco-Bio Colombia
seeks to refocus
its efforts towards strengthening productivity and consolidating
direct export
operations, both for its organic coffee and for other
conventional specialty
coffees in the region. This initiative has the full support of DAABON’s
top
management and is led by an experienced technical-administrative team.
Furthermore,
the project has the commercial and financial backing of DAABON Japan’s
office.
To meet the goals of this project, Eco-Bio Colombia
has implemented an agronomic improvement plan aimed at improving
productivity at
its plantations and, in parallel, acquired and put into operation its
new
high-capacity mechanical coffee drying facility. This will guarantee
that the
operations run smoothly for the next 20 years. Lastly, Eco-Bio Colombia
has
recently built its new administrative offices in the Las Américas Free
Trade
Zone, from where it will direct all its operations going forward.