ABOUT
Northern Highlands Coffee Company Limited is a 100% Tanzanian-owned company registered in Tanzania with a certificate of incorporation number 140922544 dated 30th January 2021. Our company produces and exports single-origin coffee from Tarime region in Tanzania. We primarily deal with Hard Arabica (natural processed) at 1850masl, via a network of over 500 farmers, and four registered agriculture marketing cooperative societies (AMCOS).
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ABOUT TARIME
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The coffee comes from the Tarime district of Tanzania. Tarime District is one of the six districts of the Mara Region of Tanzania, East Africa. It was previously known as the "North Mara District". It is bordered from the north to east by the Kenyan districts of Migori, Trans Mara and Kisii, and to the east by the Maasai Mara game reserve.
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To the south, it is bordered across the Mara River by the Musoma Urban, Musoma Rural and Serengeti districts, and to the west by Rorya District. Distances in Tanzania are vast - there are almost 1000 km between coffee-producing regions in the North and in the South, same for East and West. The altitudes are up to nearly 2000 MASL in many places. 90% of coffee producers are smallholder farmers, owning between 0.5 to 3 hectares, and less than 10% of the coffee are grown at estates.
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Similar to Kenya, coffee came with the French missionaries in the late 1800s and was planted around Kilimanjaro for the most part (there are the bourbon varieties that are often seen as SLs in Kenya now). The red volcanic soil of Tarime, adds value to both natural and thoroughly washed coffees. Tarime Coffee is sustainably grown with each bean being hand-picked and naturally processed to give you an incredibly distinctive taste full of rich flavor. In general, there are two varieties widely used today, the bourbon-descended N39 hybrid, and the Kent hybrid KP432, as well as Kent varieties K7 and K9. The COMPACT variety supplied by TACRI is also widely used.
Kahawa Yetu!
Growing Coffee in Tanzania
Exports from nearly every coffee-growing country in Africa are lower now than they were twenty years ago.
The most notable exception is Ethiopia, where coffee exports have reached 3 million bags, nearly double the number in 1997. Less dramatic, but nevertheless unique for Africa, is the strong and steady growth in Tanzania.
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Taking the average number of bags exported annually 2007-2017—to account for crop fluctuations—Tanzania experienced an increase of 11 percent over the previous 10 years.
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Tanzania broke the million bags exported ceiling for the first time in 2009 and did it again in 2013. This increase in exports has coincided with a nearly 600 percent increase in domestic coffee consumption over twenty years.
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The only coffee-growing country to experience a more dramatic increase in Vietnam, where domestic coffee consumption has grown by 700 percent over the same period.