Mountain Top Estate in Nimbin, New South Wales
After entering the market at a time when Australian origin coffee was relatively unknown, Mountain Top Estate has been a pioneer in marketing a world-class bean. Now the farm is up for sale as owner, Andrew Ford, turns to work his magic on developing markets.
Just weeks before the 2004 World Barista Championship, soon-to-be crowned Tim Wendelboe was still undecided on what coffee he would use.
He was developing a drink based on one of his favourite desserts, Tiramisu, and had to make it liquid because of the World Barista Championship rules.
“This was the fun part,” he later told the Barista Guild of Taiwan. “I spent over six months trying to balance the different ingredients until the drink was perfect… The coffee I used played a vital role in the drink’s taste balance. I managed to find coffee from Mountain Top Estate in Australia. This coffee had just the right chocolate aftertaste and loads of fruitiness.”
While using Australian coffee as a single origin may not be big news today, it certainly caused a stir seven years ago when few countries even knew Australia grew coffee, recounts Andrew Ford, owner of Mountain Top Estate, the 30-hectare farm located in the hills above the NSW town of Nimbin. It is now widely known for producing some of the best beans coming out of Australia.
“While it might be more common today, back then it was really ground breaking,” he says. “The fact that he used it was really a testament that Australia had quality coffee.”
It’s an impressive achievement for a farm that had just started harvesting. Since he began on the land, Andrew didn’t want anything less than to produce quality coffee that would not only stand out as some of the country’s best, but could stand alongside the best coffee in the world.
Andrew set up the company as an export business and put six to nine months of research into how to grow specialty coffee. His goal was to be the “Grange Hermitage” of single origin coffee.
Penfold’s Grange Hermitage is a renowned top-end Australian wine label. “It has successfully created a global awareness of Australian wine,” Andrew says. “It also put in place product development and quality development processes that have been globally recognised.”
Following the successful wine label’s example, Andrew says that every decision made from the outset has followed the Grange business model to achieve global success. They studied best-practice operations from around the world, for instance, looking at plantation layout from Hawaii and Brazil and commissioned five research and development projects into irrigation techniques and market development.
“Very early on, the Australian coffee market was relatively backwards,” Andrew says. “But, we were prepared to have our coffee judged by our peers against the rest of the world.”
From 2000 to 2005, the company employed experts from across the globe to get advice on everything from production to markets. It was this market-driven approach that Andrew credits for keeping the company on target in developing and delivering a high quality product.
Even before taking the international stage with Tim at the 2004 World Barista Championship, a year earlier Paul Bassett, Australia’s first and only World Barista Champion, was already looking at Mountain Top Estate Coffee in selecting a blend. Having grown up in Byron Bay near the plantation, Paul says he initially took notice of the beans as a patriotic element, wanting to bring a taste of home to the world stage. But, having worked closely with the coffee, he contends that Andrew has produced the “best coffee coming out of Australia without a doubt”.
“It was coffee grown in my own backyard,” says Paul. “Andrew has been one of the first people to take coffee professionally… A lot of people are growing coffee as a hobby. He’s been serious, investing in equipment and not holding back in that area.”
From Tim and Paul’s initial interest, Mountain Top Estate generated an impressive international press run. They spent the next four to five years riding that wave of interest with barista and specialty traders all over the world buying and using their product. Andrew entered the coffee into numerous international competitions and consistently placed well in all of them. From 2004 to 2008, the company had someone in the top three at every World Barista Competition using Mountain Top Estate.
Behind the scenes and glory of the competitions, the company continued to pioneer several new processing and packaging innovations, receiving government grants and funding for research and development into coffee production, processing, farming and marketing. Andrew proudly says: “Most [people] in the Australian industry know Mountain Top or have good respect for what we’ve done.”
Having now spent 10 to 15 years in farming and production and linking up the specialty coffee market, Andrew is looking to take that knowledge and apply it to markets all over the world. He is moving away from coffee growing, and into the green coffee trading business with the MTC Group. The company is taking a broader focus, in taking the knowledge, skills and lessons learned on Mountain Top and applying these with other global producers. MTC Group is currently working on development projects in Southeast Asia, including Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Laos and will soon be working in Thailand and China.
“We have a very direct hands-on approach. There’s certainly a development aspect to our work,” says Andrew. “We’re looking at joint-venture production.”
MTC Group’s goal is to improve the quality of the beans coming out of these countries, by providing the skills, resources and market knowledge.
This new business direction, however, means moving away from the Mountain Top Estate plantation and the farm is now up for sale. After developing one of the country’s top beans, Andrew is looking for a buyer who can take the farm to the “next step”.
“From mid-2008, the energy and effort has certainly shifted from the Mountain Top Estate towards our trading ventures and now after almost 15-years both my father and I have decided to move onto new projects,” explains Andrew. “Mountain Top Estate is a well-established business with good historic yields, strong demand and solid management and procedures allowing the new owner to walk straight into a strong business. That said however, we really hope to find a buyer who throws themselves at this project and takes it to the next level.”
