Louise Sinclair-Peters
Our Story.
Let us take you on a journey to how it all began as Louise Sinclair-Peters, one of our founding members, shares with us the birth story of Lighthouse Coffee:
Pastor Mo Aung
Dave and I had already spent eight years living and working in Southeast Asia, when in 2009 we had the privilege of meeting some Myanmar migrant workers who lived near our church in Thailand. Even though we loved interacting with them, we always felt sadness over the fact that we couldn’t do it in their native language. Then one day we were introduced to Pastor Isaiah, a Myanmar migrant worker who shared the same love and passion for his people we had been carrying in our hearts. We felt an instant connection and started engaging more and more in the migrant workers’ community. It wasn't long before Pastor Mo Aung, another Myanmar migrant worker, joined our team. He would often speak of the Acho Chin people living in Rakhine and the Magway region of Western Myanmar. Pastor Moe Aung knew personally of the hardships his people group faced living on the mountain. He explained that men hunted for wild animals to provide for their livelihood. This was dangerous work and hard on the environment and the families, as the men were forced to be away from home for long periods of time. Many nights Pastor Moe Aung and Pastor Isaiah would pray together and dream about a way to bring economic hope to the Acho people in Myanmar.
In 2012 Pastor Moe Aung invited Pastor Isaiah to visit his people on the mountain with him. An instant bond was formed between Pastor Isaiah and the Acho people. Pastor Isaiah started making yearly visits to the western mountains close to Mindone to help train leaders, encourage the churches and help the communities. With a new democratic spirit, the country of Myanmar started to open up more and more at that time which encouraged many migrant workers to return to their home country. Together with Pastor Isaiah and Pastor Moe Aung we started dreaming of joining them, as our desire grew to see positive transformation reach the Myanmar communities we’d been investing in. We were amazed at the dedication we saw in many of the young pastors connected to Pastor Isaiah, as they gave up everything to serve their people. We started to wonder how these young leaders and their communities could be supported financially and become self-sustainable.That’s when Pastor Isaiah and his entrepreneurial spirit began to thrive! First, he taught the pastors and farmers on the mountain how to plant a new rice variety, then he taught them how to plant velvet beans and finally he started growing star beans. All these crop varieties promised a good profit initially, but then the market would bottom out.
Pastor Isaiah
During one of his visits to Pastor Maung Aung's village on the mountain, Isaiah noticed Arabica coffee growing in abundance on all the farms. He asked the farmers, “who do you sell your coffee to?” The local people explained, “At first the coffee companies would come and buy the coffee from us for a very low price. But then they stopped coming completely. Some years we have to throw the beans away because there is no market”. Pastor Isaiah was immediately intrigued to learn more about the coffee market. Soon he made friends with a farmer and exporter in Northern Thailand who was growing specialty coffee. When he saw the profit available to the farmers in Thailand, he had hope that the beautiful arabica coffee beans on the mountain did not need to be wasted. Then he came back to us and proposed a big idea: "What if we exported Myanmar specialty coffee to Canada?”. Excited about this new opportunity we arrived in Yangon on January 15, 2017 as Business Consultants for Pastor Isaiah’s newly formed company. While in language school, we started our research into the specialty coffee market by benchmarking at a number of successful specialty coffee farms in Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries who shared similar values to us. With each visit, we learned more about growing specialty coffee and the standards of excellence required.
In 2018, Pastor Isaiah bought his first bag of green coffee beans from Maung Hmin, a local coffee farmer in Nga Kone. Small bags of green beans soon arrived at our front door in Yangon. During that time, we still hadn’t secured a buyer for our green beans. After more than 50 years of military rule in Myanmar, everyone we met discouraged us from trying to export to Canada. “It would be too difficult”, the business experts told us.Then one day our friend Paul was visiting from Canada. As we were sitting in our living room he asked, "just how much arabica coffee do you hope to get off the mountain this year?”, “One tonne", we answered confidently. Paul, took out his calculator, hammered out some numbers, looked up and said, "well, that’s just about the exact amount of coffee that I use in my catering business each year...why don't I buy your green beans?" Shocked but excited to have secured a buyer, our whole team went to work getting the export licenses and shipping documents prepared. In 2019 our first coffee harvest was cupped by one of the top coffee cuppers in Myanmar. Saya U Khine gave us an “84”. This was only our first year helping the local coffee farmers improve their coffee to the specialty level. On a hot day in March 2019 we waved goodbye to our first 20 burlap bags of beautiful Lighthouse specialty coffee as it was taken to the port of Yangon. The whole Myanmar and Canadian team cheered! We felt like we had successfully just put a man on the moon!
-Louise Sinclair-Peters
Specialty Coffee in Myanmar.
A Brief History
From the highest mountain peak in Southeast Asia to the most southern tip of its 1,930km (1200 mi) coast line, Myanmar (also known as Burma) is an endless treasure hunt for those seeking rich culture, history, and beauty. The land of gems and jewels, ancient crafts and elaborate pagodas, has only recently been discovered to carry great potential for another treasure to flourish: specialty coffee. Even five years ago if asked, many people would not have known that Myanmar is a coffee producing region at all. This however, is rapidly changing and people are discovering Myanmar as the new rising star on the specialty coffee horizon.
Despite the new interest, coffee has been cultivated in Myanmar for over 130 years. In 1885 missionaries first initiated coffee growing on two experimental farms in Mergui and Tavoy. For a few decades exclusively Robusta was grown, until Arabica was introduced to Myanmar in 1930. In the first years of harvest, Myanmar Arabica was mainly exported to India and the UK. But with the governmental shifts of the country, the coffee industry too underwent significant changes throughout the following decades. In the 1980’s and 1990’s the Government of Myanmar „commenced a major nation-wide coffee planting programme“ mainly to „facilitate the eradication of opium poppy growing“(Winston et al. 2005. p.7). The coffee was mostly sold locally with cherry prices being kept relatively low through the traditional rule of supply and demand. In 2015 prices fell so low that some producers even quit picking coffee entirely, as it made no financial sense for them to do so (Morrocchi. 2017. p.24). But 2015 was also the year that brought about a big change to the coffee industry in Myanmar. In 2014 USAID had begun investing in specialty coffee in the Shan state, and in 2015 Myanmar’s top quality coffee was cupped by an industry expert who deemed it specialty grade. The following year Myanmar’s coffee was exported to North America for the first time.
Myanmar has since been generating more and more interest around the specialty coffee world. As James Hoffmann, a leading coffee expert and author of The World Atlas of Coffee: From Beans to Brewing recently stated in an interview: “it really is a surprise and a delight! [...] it’s a surprisingly clean, soft and delicate coffee –plum-like and really sweet”*. The Brewer’s Club goes on to say that Myanmar’s specialty coffee can be described „as a combination of a fruity Ethiopian natural and a classic earthy Sumatra coffee: bright, sweet, sparkling and luscious“.
Sources
1. Winston, E., Op de Laak, J., Marsh, T., Aung, O. & Chapman, K. (2005): Coffee Manual for Myanmar, p.7. FAO, Bangkok.
2. Morrocchi, S. (2017): Mynamar. Southeast Asia‘s surprising new specialty producer. In: Standart (9) 2017. p.22-29.
3. Butterworth, M. (2018): James Hoffmann on the world atlas of Coffee, Second edition. https://www.thecoffeecompass.com/james-hoffmann-on-the-world-atlas-of-coffee-second-edition/
4. BrewersClub Coffee. Myanmar. https://brewersclub.co/coffee-region/asia/myanmar/
