‘Best of Nicaragua’ Auction Update

 May 2017

After our Best of El Salvador Auction in April the Project Origin team had a chance to get closer to and better understand what’s happening in Central America right now. For Nicaragua an early harvest in combination with a late timing of our auction meant we’ve had to cancel our Best of Nicaragua Auction event.

The reasons we’ve decided not to go ahead are as follows:

Weather patterns – the high amount of rain during harvest this year has meant most producers were looking at an earlier picking period. Where harvests in the past may have stretched out all the way until April, this year many producers we were in touch with were done harvesting by mid-March.

Coffees selling early – harvesting early naturally means coffees are ready to sell early. This, for our event, meant there was not a lot of high-end specialty coffee left to enter into our competition.

Late harvest regions – some areas will have later ripening coffees than other areas, but again this year given the weather all of the areas were pushed forward.

Timing – we set our event towards the end of the season so we would not clash with Cup of Excellence and also to give options to producers with later harvested coffees, or smaller lots not entered into COE. Unfortunately because of the weather and the need for producers to sell as soon as coffees are ready, this means that there was going to be very little still available to make up a successful auction event.

We’re disappointed that we could not run this event as we hoped, but for the logistics and costs involved, and given the factors above, we made the decision we believed best.

If you would like any further information about the cancellation of our Nicaraguan auction, or are interested in the upcoming Honduras Late Harvest auction please get in touch with [email protected]