When we talk about co-ops in the coffee industry, we mostly refer to cooperatives that operate coffee mills or act as alliances of coffee producers. That’s pretty much it.
In the six years that I’ve been running this company, I had not once come across a coffee roasting co-op. Until Tane.
Co-founded by an ecclectic mix of people, Tane Roasters Collective is a different type of coffee roasting company that you or I as its customer could buy into.
“Our key goal is to be as transparent as possible. We want to tell our customers precisely where every single cent is going,” explained one of its co-founders Jasper de Clerck.
Based in the Belgian city of Leuven, Tane Roasters Collective currently rents its roasting equipement on a weekly basis to cover its production needs and hopes to soon be able to afford its own Loring roaster.
“Ideally, the electricity needs would be powered by solar energy to have as little a carbon footprint as possible.” Jasper went on.
I first found out about them because of my local Amsterdam Coffeevine ambassador Dani Bordiniuc (@amsterdani) who met Jasper during a visit to Antwerp-based green coffee importers 32Cup.
Tane Roasters Collective isn’t a full-time job for any of the co-founders just yet. They all have regular day jobs elsewhere and for Jasper this is being part of the quality control team at 32Cup.
As such, he gets to co-decide which coffees end up making it into 32Cup’s program and that offers a unique chance to taste some pretty exciting coffees before anyone else even knows they’re available.
Maybe it was this connection that enabled Tane to secure a pretty outstanding Burundian coffee from Nemba, a washing station in the Kayanza region of the small landlocked African country.
This washing station received coffees from over 3.113 smallholder farmers who live in the surrounding area and who produce really delicious and outspoken coffees that are a great representation of the country’s best output.
Getting this coffee was no mean feat. Burundi is regularly rocked by political instability and its remote location makes transporting its exports to the nearest port rather difficult. Especially in times of coronavirus.
That is why we’re excited to have this coffee as part of our upcoming May ’20 coffee box’s lineup alongside our first-ever 96h anaerobic fermented coffee from Brazil and our first washed coffee from Papua New Guinea.
THANKS FOR READING THIS ARTICLE ABOUT TANE ROASTERS COLLECTIVE
DID YOU KNOW THAT WE RUN EUROPE’S #1 COFFEE SUBSCRIPTION?
Every month, we work with three awesome roasters and deliver their freshly roasted coffees to customers all over the world. Our next box will ship on 20-05.
