Indonesia – Ijen Highlands

Indonesia – Ijen Highlands

Kevenka was formed by two entrepreneurs brother Kevin & Kenny Soewondo who are from Surubaya in East Java. They initially started in coffee by opening a cafe in Surubaya and then realised they could roast themselves they opened a roastery. This soon led to them being inquisitive about the supply of green coffee they received and led them to start processing green coffee themselves from the highlands in and around Mt Ijen to supply their roastery. The next natural step was to start selling green coffee in the expanding internal specialty market as well as exporting coffee. In recent years they have been renting old processing facilities that were previously used for rice processing and drying and turned this into their processing centers at the bottom of Mt Ijen. Kevin Soewondo has travelled to Colombia to undertake the Q porcessing level 3 qualification to enhance their knowledge and improve their processing.

They are embracing technology as well by investing in a small cherry colour sorter that helps them to be precise with the cherry and conssitency. They are using a more long term solution to ensuring they have the cherry they need without penalising farmers and collectors to sort this. Historically with the wet hulled process in Indonesia there has never been the incentive to deliver uniform ripe cherry due to the high demand and prices often seen in the local market. To get cherry the colour sorter has opened more opportunities for them and also increased their efficiency of not needing to handsort all the coffee before processing. For the 2025 season they have also invested in a Pinhalese mechanical drier due to the often wet envrionment they have to dry their coffee in.

Mt. Ijen, Indonesia is a mountain located in East Java, around 3,5 hours’ drive from Bali. It is a somewhat active volcano in East Java province, Indonesia. A popular tourist destination is its crater which has the world’s biggest acid lake, bright turquoise in colour, that burns with a blue fire from the sulphur in the water.

The coffee farmers that live on these two mountains usually also farm and sell tobacco and other commodities when the coffee season is over. Their grandparents are usually ethnically originally from Madura Island (a smaller island north of Java Island). Many of them speak the Madurese language, even though Javanese is spoken in Surabaya, the closest big city to these two mountains.

Kevenka work with 5 areas on Mt Ijen souring their cherry through collectors and their total network of farmers is upto 500. The villages they source from are Cucuk, Aldi, Sutrisno, Sunotoand Lis.

All the coffees come from these 5 sites and then arrive to their processing center in Botolinggo village. Kevenka also have their own small micro dry mill where they will prepare the coffees for final export.

Anaerobic Natural

Harvest & Receiving: Cherry pickers harvest ripe cherries, which are quality-checked and received at Botolinggo Mill.

Washing & Primary Sorting: Cherries are washed, density-sorted, and color-sorted to remove defects.

Drying: Cherries are dried for 11–13 days to reach the required moisture level and if needed finished in the mechanical drier below 40 degrees.

Milling & Secondary Sorting: Dried cherries are hulled, then sorted using pneumatic/catador systems, screen size grading, gravity table density sorting, and color sorting.