The Problem.
How to stop the burning of unsustainable Costa Rican rainforest wood and simply rely on the natural by-product of coffee milling, coffee husk for energy instead. The existing process was a manual operation using Victorian furnace technology- manpower intensive, expensive, inefficient, damaging to the coffee and damaging to the environment. A secondary problem was that the traditional technology was spoiling the otherwise fantastic quality coffee because the drying temperature could not be kept constant resulting in poorly dried coffee beans that the market wouldn't pay top dollar for.
The Solution.
Financed by Barclays Bank and underwritten by an export loan guarantee, Bioflame installed a total of four burners at the co-operative in 2004 and the building was opened by Georgina Butler, the then British Ambassador to Costa Rica. Coop Dota is now in its forth annual harvest of producing top quality Arabica coffee without burning down the forest. Throughout Costa Rica and El Salvador, Bioflame equipment is responsible for preserving 60,000m³ of wood every year.
Coop Dota coffee is available from Coppedota
- Replaced wood fuel with 100% waste coffee husk
- Low maintenance - only half hour per week
- Fully automatic - low operating manpower
- Computer controlled to emulate real sun drying
- Accurate to +/- 2oC for highest quality drying
- Cleanburn technology - independently tested on site by Government Officials at 89.2% efficiency
- No harmful emissions proven at same test
- Refractory ceramics guaranteed for 5 years
- PIN enabled for payment protection
- Average real payback is less than two years
- Five year data and track record
Roberto Mata, General Manager of Coopdota RL - winner of best National Estates Coffee- Halved his production costs to $7 a bag
- Improved quality at a premium of $20 a bag
- Saved 7,000m3 of wood p.a.
- Returned $82 a bag to his 700 member farmers last year (the world average was $18 - source World Bank)
Bioflame has nineteen such systems now running in Central America
Date - 07/06/2006
