GICHICHI

Othaya Farmers’ Co-operative Society Limited is situated about 150km north of Kenya's capital of Nairobi in Othaya Town, Nyeri County. Othaya is sandwiched between Mt. Kenya and the Aberdare Ranges, at an altitude of 1828 meters (approximately 6000 feet) above sea level. This is where the world-famous Arabica coffee is grown. The Society was registered in 1956 as a coffee marketing society with an initial membership of 250 farmers. Currently, the Society has 19 factories with a total membership of 15,000 small scale farmers. It has 13 management and 3 supervisory committee members. The Society has coffee nurseries for coffee seedlings, 19 coffee factories/wet mills and store outlets in each of the wet mills for provision of farm inputs. The Society also has a dry mill that serves the 19 coffee factories through finance raised by selling shares to the members. All coffee from Othaya Farmers’ Co-operative Society is Fairtrade Certified. One of the factories belonging to this giant co-operative is Chinga wet mill. This wet mill built in 1987 and is in Karuthi sub-location is between two rivers Rwarai and Chinga River.