What a Jamaican Coffee Works Does

A coffee works is the licensed facility where Jamaican coffee cherries become the graded green beans sold for export or roasting. JACRA requires anyone who processes, cleans or otherwise prepares coffee for sale to hold a coffee works license, and the country's coffee works range from small operations to large, long-established factories such as Mavis Bank.

What does a coffee works actually do?

A coffee works is the processing plant that turns raw coffee cherries into the graded, dried green beans that get exported or sold to roasters. It is a distinct stage from farming: most coffee works buy or receive cherries from many individual farmers rather than growing all of the coffee themselves, and JACRA describes Jamaica's coffee works as licensed "operators of works," alongside dealers, manufacturers, processors and nurseries, within its wider regulation of the industry.

JACRA licensing of coffee works

Operating a coffee works in Jamaica requires a specific Coffee Works License from JACRA, the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority. According to JACRA's own published licensing guidance, the license is required for anyone who "processes, cleans, or otherwise prepares for sale, coffee berries," and applicants must also separately hold a valid license under the Factories Act and under the Natural Resources Conservation Authority Act before JACRA will license the works itself. JACRA's coffee division also licenses dealers, manufacturers, processors and nursery operators, and its subsidiary, Coffee Marks Limited, owns and manages the Jamaica Blue Mountain® and Jamaican High Mountain Supreme® trademarks that a works' output may ultimately carry, described further on certification.

From pulpery to export: the steps at a coffee works

Inside a working coffee works, cherries go through a defined sequence. Wallenford Coffee's own description of its process begins at the pulpery, where cherries are mechanically stripped of their outer skin, before the beans are washed to remove the mucilage and sent for drying, first on sun-drying patios and then in rotary mechanical dryers. What comes out of drying is parchment coffee, which is rested for weeks before hulling removes the parchment husk to reveal green coffee. The beans are then graded by size and density into categories such as No.1s, No.2s, No.3s and peaberries, described further on grading, sorted by machine and by hand to remove defects, and packed, commonly in 60 kg bags or, for the top grades, in wooden barrels.

Mavis Bank: Jamaica's largest coffee works

Mavis Bank Coffee Factory, in the small town of Mavis Bank in the Blue Mountains, has operated continuously since 1923 and describes itself as Jamaica's largest fully integrated Blue Mountain coffee facility. It processes roughly one million pounds of green beans a year sourced from about 6,000 farmers, and holds Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices, HACCP and Safe Quality Foods certification alongside its JACRA license; the company states that all of its export coffee is certified by JACRA's coffee division, and that its green beans ship in GrainPro bags in addition to traditional barrels. More detail on the factory and its role in the wider region is covered on Mavis Bank.

Other licensed coffee works

Mavis Bank is not the only licensed works in the Blue Mountains. Wallenford Coffee is another established Jamaican processor with its own pulpery and finishing plant, and a number of individual growing operations run or contract with coffee works as part of processing their own crop, described further on estates. Because a JACRA works license is separate from ownership of any particular farm, a single coffee works can process cherries from many small growers as well as from any estate that operates it. That structure is part of why Jamaica's coffee industry, though closely associated with a handful of well-known names, actually depends on thousands of small farmers who sell their cherries into a much smaller number of licensed works for processing.

Why licensing matters for buyers

For a buyer, the fact that a coffee works is licensed by JACRA is part of what stands behind a bag labeled Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. Licensing does not by itself guarantee a particular flavor or quality tier, but it ties a facility's processing activity to the same regulator that administers Jamaica's trademarks and grading standards, connecting the works stage of production back to the rules that govern how the coffee can ultimately be labeled and sold, described further on Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. JACRA describes its own core functions as including the setting of quality standards and the provision of quality assurance and certification services across the industry, which is one reason the coffee works stage, not just the farm or the final package, sits inside the regulatory chain rather than outside it.