Caffe Praego Coffee
{Our Coffee} from Caffe Praego
Coffee Company
Ethical Direct Sourcing, {Sustainability} & “Giving Back”
Our partnership with Caffe Praego goes back 12 years. Their teams personally source fully washed green bean direct from the growers & then ship to their UK roastery, to finely produce our various Connoisseurs blends. In 2022 we produced over 10 million coffees.
The green bean is sourced primarily from five co-operative washing stations located on the shores of the beautiful Lake Kivu in Rwanda.
Rwanda produces superb Arabica cherries throughout a long harvest from March to June, with the majority of coffee trees grown at high altitude & on rich, fertile, volcanic soil.
Caffe Praego are “unique” in the market, in that they work very closely with the washing stations, co-operatives & farmers, buying directly & paying “Fair Trade Prices”.
Each co-operative is personally visited each year at harvest time, to check on the quality of the beans and agree on our order requirements for the next 12 months.
Caffe Praego then “put back” financial funding to help improve the lives of the farmers families & their communities, with a number of directly managed projects through their charity partner The Point Foundation.
Since 2010, they have supported @5,500 vulnerable, special needs, orphaned children & young adults with @ £500k of funding directed to:
- Caffe Praego Mwogo Vocational Training Centre
- Ubumwe Community Centre for disability
- Izere Centre for Cerebral Palsy Children
- La Germaine School
- Kigeyo School
For more details on the above & previous projects & the huge differences Caffe Praego are making, please visit the Point Foundation Website.
Caffe Praego {Coffee Blends}
Our popular “Connoisseurs” range includes beans, filtered & freeze dried blends, to satisfy every taste. Each blend has a different make up but is suitable for automatic & traditional Bean to Cup machines. To enhance the full bodied taste of our coffee, we add a small amount of an equally high quality Robusta cherry bean, grown to create a perfect Espresso with thickness, body and delicious taste. Our coffee graders description of the Lake Kivu taste profile as “sweet, clean & with a hint of berry” producing a smooth, well-structured coffee with a rich crema and maximum flavour – ideal as an everyday coffee and perfect with the addition of fresh milk.
Our Connoisseurs blend names all have a Rwandan meaning & include:
- Lake Kivu & Lake Kivu Dark Roast
- Inzozi “Dreams”
- Ineza “Kindness”
- Izuba “Sun”
- Amasimbi “Water”
For more details on the individual washing stations & blend make ups please visit the Caffe Praego Website.
{Sustainable} packaging
Coffee Bags & Cases
Caffe Praego do not use aluminium packaging, meaning their bags are more environmentally friendly & easy to recycle. Bags are designed to maximise the freshness of the roasted beans with a special patented seal. Caffe Praego cardboard boxes are made from recycled material & can be recycled again. The boxes contain no bleaches & the ink is from a sustainable source.
{Coffee & Art} – a great combination
Historically, coffee & art have always been linked. As part of Caffe Praego’s community projects with Point Foundation, they have supported 145 orphan students through university including 24 year old art student, Frank SETTO. He grew up in the Noel Orphanage having lost all adult family members during the 1994 genocide. Despite traumatic memories, institutional childhood and poverty, Frank is a natural born artist & now designs & paints some of the coffee bags. Caffe Praego use another brilliant artist called Frederick Ndabaramiye. Frederick was aged 15 when brutally attacked by resistance fighters after the genocide who cut of both his hands. His remarkable recovery is a triumph over physical limitations & his passion for life shows through the vibrance of his paintings. Both painters are commissioned by Caffe Praego who purchase the paintings & own the copyrights.
