Progressive Colombian Coffee Brands Unite to Form Impact in Medellín

Several Colombian coffee businesses have come together to form Impact, a collective based in Medellín designed to support high-quality production and market access for specialty coffee.

With outreach both in English and in Spanish, Impact has opened a physical facility in the El Perpetuo Socorro district of Medellín, in the coffee warehouse of specialty coffee company La Fábrica. The facility includes a small mill for nano-lots, a quality analysis lab, an 800-kilo-per-day-capacity roastery, a barista training bar, an education hall, offices and a coffee shop.

Envisioned as an incubation hub for local specialty coffee with eyes domestic and export markets, Impact brings together six local coffee businesses: roaster/retailer La Fábrica, Colombian coffee trading company Those Coffee People, coffee roaster/retailer  Rituales, experimental production company Proyecto Renacer, progressive farm Las Brisas, and Medellín-based roaster Moara.

As an organization, Impact says it plans to work with local, independent producers who will in turn have access to Impact’s commercialization expertise and trading ecosystem.

Impact partner and Those Coffee People Co-Founder Jennifer Poole told DCN via email that the group will be focusing initially on producer networks in the regions of Antioquia, Pereria and Huila, or wherever the exporting business’ network may extend.

From there, coffees will be branded, promoted and to market for specialty-seeking buyers domestically and beyond, including such international markets as the United States and the Middle East.

“The target buyer for Impact are essentially roasters of any size who genuinely care about excellence across all parts of the supply chain,” Poole told DCN. “We also will probably have more benefit for people just starting out, as we can provide consultation/ acceleration services to help people jumpstart their specialty coffee business.”

As for coffee development, the Impact collective brings a broad range of skills and perspectives, from seed to the cupping table.

Poole said the group plans to build a broader network of producers who have demonstrated standards of operational excellence, such as full understanding of operational costs, the ability to accurately evaluate quality, and the ability to maintain production protocols for consistency.

In doing so, Poole suggested, Impact can ensure sustainable pricing to meet the specific needs of producers while promoting consistency to potential buyers.

“Once we find people that match those expectations, we make strategies to price the coffee properly in a way that everyone’s operational costs are covered, everyone has a budget for covering normal risks within their part of the operation, and also everyone has a fair profit margin,” Poole said. “Long term, we hope to help producers who maybe aren’t quite there yet but want to be. We frequently help our producer partners analyze certain variables that maybe they didn’t consider before in order to advance towards operational excellence.”

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