When It Rains, The Coffee Pours!

For those of us who are British or who live in the UK, the constant bad weather and abundance of rain are annoying to say the least, but part of our everyday lives!  Of course, rain has it benefits – producing water to drink for all living things, filling streams and putting moisture in the air, to name a few.  But did you know that severe increases in rain can help produce bumper crops of coffee beans too?

This year in Uganda, the unusual rainy weather will significantly increase their coffee output.  For the past two months, the state owned Uganda Coffee Development Authority has reported that eastern Uganda has been experiencing heavy rainfall in their coffee-growing districts.  As a result of this, exports of coffee from Uganda could rise as much as 3% this year as crop outputs increase, thanks to more rain in regions where the bean is grown.  

Coffee farmers in eastern and central Uganda who account for about 55% of the country’s annual production of beans are expected to harvest the commodity later this year.  Uganda, the biggest exporter of coffee in Africa, predominately cultivates the Robusta variety of coffee which could see exports rise to 3.6 million 60kg bags for the season.

The National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises, NUCAFE, predicts farmers will benefit from good prices for the commodity.  There are some concerns about how crops may have been affected by a prolonged dry spell between January and March, but it should not affect overall output and there should be a strong harvest.

In recent years, the Ugandan government has been encouraging the industry to grow more coffee to help boost export earnings.  In 1994, the Agriculture Ministry launched a 20-year campaign to plant 200 million trees by 2015 and to date, they have apparently planted 150 million trees, which should increase production from 3.5 million to 4.5 million bags annually.

This top export industry is now worth about $450m (£277m) for Uganda, with 1.5 million households involved in coffee growing.  Hopefully, it will continue as scientists are engineering a new drought-resistant coffee plant that will help farmers in Uganda boost their annual crop output, as the lengthy dry spells attributed to climate change are having disastrous effects on farmers’ livelihoods, and so researchers are developing drought-tolerant crops to help them cope.

Source: BBC Business News 15 September 2014

Visit: http://cimbaliuk.com/

La Cimbali’s Sarah Dyson trains Nottingham Trent University café staff on their new M34 coffee machine

             La Cimbali at Nottingham Trent University

La Cimbali’s Sales Executive Sarah Dyson recently visited Nottingham’s Trent University to train their baristas on how to use their brand new M34 super automatic coffee machine.

Nottingham Trent University is one of the largest and most popular universities in the UK, which last year attracted over 35,000 student applications!  It is particularly well known for its outstanding School of Art & Design, and recently £350 million was invested for the refurbishment of the building and facilities and in new and existing staff.  The students benefit from exceptional studios, workshop facilities and industry standard equipment, and now they have the award winning, mid-priced M34 super automatic coffee machine with integral PGS (Perfect Grinding System) Magnum on demand Blue Tooth Grinder. 

The University is a customer of Cafeology who specialise in the finest ethical beverages, and decided to upgrade their old traditional coffee machine. Andy McClatchey from Cafeology said “They had looked at bean to cup machines as they wanted to be able to offer a consistent product for their customers.  However, the perception from their customers was that the product was of lower quality when they could see that it wasn’t being hand crafted by a skilled barista.” 

After talking through their exact requirements, customer numbers and expectations, the La Cimbali team advised that the M34 with PGS would be the perfect solution for them. The M34 coffee machine offers consistent espresso extraction and also features TurboStream 4 which allows hand free milk texturing and heating.  Sarah demonstrated how the staff could get the best from this machine as well as offering practical advice on serving perfect coffee from all menus.  She trained several members of staff following the installation on July 30^th and they went ‘live’ with the equipment the following day. 

Over the last few weeks Sarah has received lots of really positive feedback from the university site saying that they think the M34 coffee machine is very easy to use, and they are really impressed with the quality and consistency of the drinks that it produces for students, visitors and staff.   

Sarah Dyson and La Cimbali team would like to wish everyone at the university many happy years with their M34 and lots of great coffee drinking!