Cooperativo Norandino formerly known as Cepicafe first started out in 1995. They are based just outside Piura City. Coffee from the Piuran mountains (northeastern Peru) first put them on the map; and together with cacao and panela Norandino has become a trusted household name.

Piura bars such as the ones at Casa Cacao, Pierre Marcolini or Original Beans get their beans from Norandino.

Where coffee is concerned, about 15K tons of it make their way through their doors every year. All of it is exclusively sold to the speciality market.

What is a Cooperative?

In the case of Norandino it is owned 100% by the farmers. The role of the cooperative is advance financing such as buying of beans, fermentation, drying, certifications (Organic, FairTrade, FairForLife, etc.), planning of training events as well as export and quality control.

One of Peru’s very few Q-Graders, Rodolfo Garcia, (skilled coffee experts in sensory evaluation) works here at Norandino.

During my visit for the cacao documentary I had a chance to see the in-house “coffee shop” and meet Rodolfo. The coffee they serve is purely black filter coffee.

In terms of cacao, Norandino receive a total of 2K tons every year. Most of it is exported to Amsterdam and Europe. The furthest the yellow bags travel is Japan.

_{Post harvest facility of Original Beans in Lorma Larga.}

_{Coop. Norandino outside Piura city from the air.}

The cacao varieties that the team works with are from all over Peru. You have of course the rare Piura Blanco cacao. Cacao from Tumbes, San Martin, Cajamarca, Amazonas, Cusco, Ucayali, Loreto and Junin find their way to Norandino. Modern hybrids and native cacao like Chuncho are assessed here as well.

For speciality cacao Norandino even carries out tests that involve making small batch samples of chocolate. The photo below shows a mini-oven for roasting and a grinder. Winnowing is done using a classic hoover setup. The final step of course is conching the nibs to make the chocolate.

Those tests are all up to the standard of Cacao of Excellence.

Very soon Norandino will also be making and exporting their very own Amazonian couverture in partnership with Original Beans.

In their shop you can buy Piura Blanco chocolate bars, raw cacao, panela and cacao butter. Everything you need to make chocolate.

Lunch break with Jan Schubert from Original Beans and the team at Norandino.

We spent about half a day touring the factory, learning about their process and filming various scenes for the documentary. I didn’t end up using them however, I put together the video at the top of the page.

You get a rough idea of how Norandino conducts their tests as well as the scale of their operation.