Sumatra, Ihtiyeri Keti Ara

Ihtiyeri Keti Ara is a family supply chain and exporting business based in the city of Takengon and currently run by Irham Yunus and his daughter, Farina Ramadhani. The company works with multiple different cooperatives in the immediate region, collecting, processing, milling, and exporting coffees of many different sortings and profiles. Farmer contributors, typical for this area, average only a few hectares each and are spread across the hillsides of the Bener Meriah and Aceh Tengah Regencies, which together circle the immediate highland ranges north and south of Lake Tawar. Royal has been buying coffee from this group for over 20 years. PT IKA, along with many local industries in the region, identifies itself as “Gayo”, after the Gayonese ethnic group which has long made Aceh their home, and which comprises a vast majority of farmer members.   Regional coffee distinctions in the northern provinces of Sumatra were originally (though not anymore) all based on human ethnicity, rather than geography itself. “Mandheling” for example, is a broad label for a widespread cultural group in Sumatra and Malaysia and subsequently the broadest coffee trading term, applying to almost any chosen blend of wet-hulled coffees from across the northern half of the island.