Indonesia Ijeh Highlands

Kevenka was formed by two entrepreneurs, brothers 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 processing 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 consistency. 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 environment 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.