It’s been six years since the Bennetts team last visited Costa Rica, so we thought it was well and truly time to reconnect with our supplier partners in person. Following their adventures in Guatemala earlier in the year, our Trader Julian and Quality Manager Georgia made the short hop over to Costa Rica, where they spent the week meeting with our key suppliers.
 
Leaving the capital, San José behind, Julian and Georgia made the winding journey southeast through the mountains, passing the towering Cerro Chirripó—the highest peak in Costa Rica—on their way to the Pérez Zeledón region. There, they met with the team at CoopeAgri, a cooperative established in 1962 with the initial aim of bypassing the outdated, restrictive export system of the time. Over the years, the cooperative’s mission evolved to focus on community sustainability.

Today, CoopeAgri is the only coffee cooperative located in the region. Thanks to its extensive catchment area, it has grown to include thousands of members. In the mid-1960s, the cooperative began diversifying its operations by launching its own supermarket brand and later expanded further into sugarcane farming and raw sugar production.
 
As the cooperative continued to grow, CoopeAgri began looking toward the future—focusing not only on financial sustainability but also on reducing its environmental impact. In the 1990s, the coop made a major investment in a large-scale wet and dry mill facility, all located on a single site. Their vision was to create an operation with the capacity to meet the demands of a rapidly growing coffee market. The result? The largest wet mill in Costa Rica—a title they still proudly hold today.
 
This centralised processing hub caught the attention of a Colombian enterprise who was equipped with the technology to extract pulp, or mucilage, from the coffee fruit and convert it into high-grade antioxidant products. The sheer volume of coffee fruit captured and processed at the CoopeAgri mill made the collaboration a natural fit. Together, the two companies spent several years refining the extraction process and building a partnership that added further value to the supply chain, while also utilising a product that is often considered a waste product.
Today, CoopeAgri has expanded its range of coffee pulp extract products to include high-antioxidant dietary supplements, beauty products, beverages, and even natural fertilisers. The cooperative, along with several of its farmer members, have been trialling the use of the diluted nutrient-rich extract as a plant food for coffee trees. From our farm visits, it was clear that this innovation is having a real impact—with some farms reporting up to a 50% increase in cherry production.
 
CoopeAgri has built a strong and longstanding relationship with Bennetts, regularly supplying high-quality HB and SHB grade washed lots – and chances are you have used them in your house blend!

The lush landscape at CoopeAgri

After farewelling the team in Pérez Zeledón, we braved the winding, stomach-churning mountain roads back toward the world-renowned Tarrazú Valley. There, we caught up with two of our long-term supplier partners in the town of Tarrazú —Sustainable Trading Company (STC) and their parent cooperative, CoopeTarrazu.
 
CoopeTarrazu is officially the largest coffee cooperative in Costa Rica, with around 5,000 members. As we drove through the town, the cooperative’s presence was unmistakable—it’s name and logo proudly displayed on billboards and bus stops, a clear sign of its deep roots in the local community. The cooperative operates several cherry receiving stations, and two processing mills dedicated to commercial-grade coffees. In 2013, CoopeTarrazu took a significant step toward diversification by purchasing the nearby Tirra Estate. Since then, they’ve focused on producing more specialty and premium-grade coffees. The estate is fully managed by the coop, where they grow, hand-harvest, and process their own coffee—resulting in three distinct premium lots under the Tirra name: natural, honey, and washed.
 
STC, on the other hand, is more of an export company, focused on relationships, that collaborates with local micro-mill producers to source fully prepared specialty microlots, each with distinct and unique flavour profiles. The individual producers manage every step of the process, from harvesting and grading to pulping and fermentation, tailored to achieve the desired result. In recent years, Costa Rican micro-mills have been at the forefront of innovative coffee processing methods, from anaerobic steel tank fermentation to various honey, yeast and natural processing techniques. We had the privilege of tasting the first microlots produced this season, and while still fresh, they were displaying incredible fruity flavours with bright acidity (stay tuned for more updates on these microlots later in the year as we will be shipping some unique offerings to Melbourne).

Bennetts have proudly partnered with STC for nearly a decade, sourcing some of the finest specialty and micro-mill coffees the Tarrazu valley has to offer.

A fresh mound of cherries at CoopeTarrazu
 

Just a short fifteen-minute drive from STC in Tarrazú lies the picturesque town of Dota, home to our final supply partner on this trip—CoopeDota. Founded in 1960 by a group of just 96 small producers, this nonprofit cooperative began with a collective purchase of the facility where their mill still operates today, originally acquired from the national bank.
 
While not as large as its neighbouring cooperative, CoopeDota has established a strong presence in the local community. Their distinct branding is proudly displayed across billboards and bus stops, and their flagship café is a striking feature on Dota’s main street.
CoopeDota has built a solid reputation through its consistent quality offerings—most notably their ‘SHB CoopeDota Hermosa (Tarrazú)’. But beyond their coffee, they’ve also demonstrated exceptional leadership in environmental stewardship. Over 20 years ago, the coop’s board of directors began implementing sustainable initiatives, culminating in a historic milestone: in 2011, CoopeDota became the world’s first carbon neutral coffee exporter—setting a benchmark for the industry. Today, the current board continues that legacy with renewed energy and purpose. With a new generation at the helm, there’s a clear moral commitment to advancing environmental and social sustainability.
 
In 2024, CoopeDota launched Project One—a wide-reaching sustainability initiative designed to address land, air, and water usage within a circular economy framework. The first phase of the project evaluated the coop’s use of 15 million litres of water annually in their milling process. Rather than redirecting the nutrient-rich wastewater into filtration fields for groundwater reabsorption, the team recognised its potential value. Through an innovative “hydro-nucleus” process—incorporating fans and magnets to mimic the moon cycles, and the addition of minerals such as potassium and carbon—they are transforming this waste product into a usable plant fertiliser at an incredible speed of just 24 hours.
 
Not only is this revolutionary process utilising waste materials, but the carbon required is being captured at their own facility. Currently, the coop has fitted tubing to their trucks exhaust which run through a specialised liquid capture system, effectively removing 80% of the carbon from being released to the atmosphere. This carbon is then used as an ingredient in the fertiliser production. While still in the trial phase, the coop is using the fertiliser on coffee trees and vegetable crops with immediate and positive results. We’re keen to see how this project evolves over the coming years, and in the meantime, we get to enjoy their delicious sustainable coffee.
 
In Costa Rica, sustainability is backed by more than just innovation—it’s built into the very structure of the coffee industry. The sector is overseen by Icafe (the Costa Rica Coffee Institute), a non-governmental public institution established in 1933 to ensure transparency and fair participation across the supply chain, with a strong focus on supporting farmers.
 
One of Icafe’s key roles is to regulate the minimum price at which coffee can be sold. Exporters must have their sales contracts approved by the institute, safeguarding against under-pricing and helping to ensure that farmers are paid fairly for their work.
 
Additionally, Icafe controls how the Free on Board (FOB) price is distributed across the three main participants in the supply chain: producers receive 80%, mills 7%, and exporters 3%. This allocation reflects the scale of each stakeholder’s role, ensuring that smallholder farmers—who carry the bulk of the production workload—receive the lion’s share of the value. It’s a uniquely structured system that not only guarantees traceability but also gives buyers peace of mind, knowing that their investment supports a supply chain where everyone is treated equitably.