Sumatra Pongo

Ketiara Coffee Cooperative Coffee from Sumatra, Indonesia

Founded in 2008, the Ketiara Coffee Cooperative brings together approximately 1,000 members, 90% of whom are women. The cooperative has been certified organic since 2012 and exports organically grown coffee from Sumatra.

The Ketiara Coffee Cooperative aims to:

• Ensure fair incomes for coffee farmers
• Emphasize the importance of nature conservation
• Highlight the need for education
• Create social and financial opportunities and stability
• Promote health in the community

Thanks to the cooperative’s founding, farmers have been able to improve their working conditions and expand their businesses more quickly, leading to increased sales and profits. Today, Ketiara is one of the leading coffee producers in Sumatra.

Social and Environmental Responsibility

The Ketiara Coffee Cooperative is more than a profit-oriented organization. Every member commits to acting in a socially responsible way beyond coffee cultivation and implementing measures that benefit workers, the community, farmers, and their families. Environmental and forest conservation are at the heart of the cooperative. Therefore, only organically certified coffee is grown. All members also work toward continuous improvements in health, education, and infrastructure development.

Sumatra Pongo Profile

• Country: Sumatra, Indonesia
• Region: Gayo Highlands, Aceh
• Growing altitude: 1,200–1,500 m
• Growing method: Organically certified
• Harvest season: September–June
• Harvest method: Selective hand-picking
• Processing: Semi-dry (semi-washed), sun-dried
• Varieties: Bourbon, Typica, Caturra, Catimor

Sumatra Aceh Growing Region

Ketiara’s growing region extends across the Gayo Highlands in Aceh, the northernmost region of Sumatra. The Leuser Ecosystem and its unique wildlife, where elephants, rhinos, tigers, and orangutans coexist, are especially distinctive features of this region.

Sumatra Pongo coffee is grown on an area of about 1,200 hectares, at temperatures between 15° C and 20° C, beneath natural shade trees. Farmers independently manage the cultivation and care of the organically certified coffee.

After selective hand-picking, the coffee beans are separated from the fruit pulp. This step is called „pulping“. The subsequent drying process reduces the moisture content of the parchment coffee to about 30%. At the cooperative’s central processing facility, it is further processed into green coffee. After an additional drying phase, when the moisture content reaches about 18%, the green coffee undergoes an initial quality inspection and machine size grading. Before packaging, marketing, and export, the beans are sorted by hand to remove defective beans and foreign matter.