Colombia Peñas Blancas Mill Java Natural 2025

Peñas Blancas Coffee Processing Center

Nestor Lasso and Jhoan Vergara, two of Colombia’s visionary coffee producers, have joined forces to lead the Peñas Blancas Coffee Processing Center in Acevedo, Huila. This centralized processing hub allows smallholders to access world-class processing techniques and deliver consistently high-quality coffee to an international market.

Peñas Blancas is driven by community and built on the pillars of collaboration, education, and sustainability. Producers, agronomists, and industry professionals come together to share knowledge via training programs and workshops on best practices so that many of the families in Acevedo who rely on coffee as their primary income can upskill and directly improve their livelihoods.

Under the helm of Nestor Lasso’s expertise in experimental processing and Jhoan Vergara’s experience in farm management, Peñas Blancas empowers producers who previously faced barriers in accessibility, quality control, and market opportunities with centralized and supervised facilities.

What is the Java Coffee?

The Java variety has a long history with roots in Ethiopia and a travel history through Indonesia, Cameroon, and Costa Rica before spreading through Central America. It shares genetic markers with Abysinia, an Ethiopian landrace, but exhibits higher tolerance of coffee leaf rust and coffee berry disease. With such a high cup quality potential, Java is renowned for its complex flavor profile with vibrant fruit notes and aromatic floral characteristics.

Green Coffee from Colombia

Over half a million families dedicate their livelihoods to producing unroasted Colombia green coffee on small farms that dot the country’s volcanic mountain ranges. As the world’s third-largest producing country, the volume, quality, and variety that comes out of Colombia year-round is staggering.

According to the USDA, the overall production growth of 6.1 percent for the 2023/2024 harvest remains modest due to reduced coffee renovation areas in 2022, driven by high coffee prices, leading to lower productivity. Dry conditions also negatively impacted young coffee trees and lower-altitude plantations, increasing coffee borer infestations and the production of smaller, underdeveloped beans. Colombia currently has around 840,000 hectares of coffee farms, mostly smallholder-run, with two peak harvest periods: the main harvest from October to December and the secondary “mitaca” harvest from April to June, primarily in the central coffee region.

Coffee from Colombia is never dull, and with 16 coffee-producing regions along three mountain ranges and two harvests each year, Colombia always has fresh coffee on hand. Read more in our Colombian Coffee Origin Report.