When 95% of the coffee has turned red the coffee is ready to be picked. The harvesters are paid by volume. At the end of the day their picked beans are collected in 60 pound bags and transported to the processing plant.

From 4 o'clock pm the pick-ups start arriving at the processing plant, where they are unloaded measuring the volume. The measuring of the volume is very important for the harvesters as they are paid by volume.

The light blue measuring receiving bin can contain excactly 100 liters of freshly picked coffee beans.

The bags are emptied into the measuring bin and when it is full the top lid is closed to ensure that the bin contains exactly 100 liters of freshly picked beans under the closed lid.

Then the bottom valve is opened and the 100 liters of fresh beans fall into a kind of buffer tank.

From the buffer tank the picked coffee beans are transported by lots of recycled water to a separation tank where the undesirable inclusions (like sand, stones, twigs and fermented beans) are separated from the quality beans.

This separation of undesirable inclusions is done in two ways.
1)The fermented coffee fruits and twigs etc float and are flushed out at the right upper side of the picture.

2) The good coffee fruits plus the sand and stones leave this separation tank at the bottom and are flushed of a serie of vertical separators in a kind of chanel. The stones and sand are trapped between the separators.

Once the coffee fruits are clean (no unwanted inclusions) they are transported to the next fase of the process by a conveyor screw and the water is recycled into the buffertank. The coffee farm has a water treatment installation, so only clean water is returned to nature.

To safe guard the machinery that de pulps the coffee fruits a last separation of none wanted inclusions.

This macine crushes the fruit without damaging the coffee beans.

The inside of the machine that actually separates the coffee bean from the pulp that contains the coffee fruit.

This macine crushes the fruit without damaging the coffee beans.

The fruit pulp leaves the machinery at the bottom.

And is transported by a screw conveyor to a storage. The fruit pulp is used as an organic fertilizer for the coffee plantations.

The wet coffee beans are stored in another buffer tank, waiting to be dried.

A close-up of wet coffee beans in the buffer tank.

Once the receiving of the harvest of the day has ended, the wet coffee beans in the buffertank are transported with conveyors through a pre dryer (works with enormous amounts of air) to the drum dryers.

The farm has various drum dryers. They are heated with firewood from dead trees of the farm or with rice husk from the local rice mills at sealevel.

Fueling the oven for the drumdryer. The oven has a heat-exchanger. The smoke goes out through the chimney and the hot air is blown into the center of the drumdryer.

The gear of the drum dryer and the blower for the hot air.

A close-up of the coffee beans drying in the drum dryer.

Once the coffee beans are dry they are dumbed via a shoot (not shown in picture) into an underground conveyor that transports the beans to silos where they go through a maturing process of 60 to 90 days (just like wine).

Once the beans have matured, they under go there last process which removes the pergament from the bean. Then they sacked and delivered to the client.