Coffee Sketcher

Alo Coffee

Properties3
descriptionThe Ethiopian family producer-exporter in the Sidama highlands whose own private auction, Echoes of the Peak, sold coffee at $1,739 a kilo in 2025.
tagsorganization, producer, exporter, ethiopia
aliasesALO Coffee, Alo

4 min read

Alo Coffee

Alo Coffee is an Ethiopian producer and exporter based in the Sidama highlands. It grows, processes and ships its own coffee, and — unusually for a producer of its size — runs its own annual online auction, Echoes of the Peak, where a lot sold for US$1,739 per kilogram in September 2025.

The name comes from Alo, a village in Bensa — the same woreda (district) that produced Basha Bekele’s record Cup of Excellence lot. That small corner of East Sidama now accounts for both the highest competition price and the highest private-auction price ever reported for Ethiopian coffee.

Role

  • Farms, processes and exports. Alo controls the chain from cherry to container, which is what makes its lots traceable enough to auction individually. Most Ethiopian smallholder coffee is pooled at a station and loses its identity on the way out.
  • Stations across two zones. By its own account Alo runs processing stations in Bensa, Bona and Burra (Sidama) and Nensebo (West Arsi) (Alo Coffee Auction, accessed 2026-07-23).
  • Founded by a couple, not a company. Tamiru — a former teacher and engineer — co-founded Alo with his wife, Messi, after the 2020 Cup of Excellence competition showed them what Ethiopian coffee could fetch when it was judged on its own merits (same source).
  • Sells through its own auction. Echoes of the Peak runs on the M-Cultivo trading platform. Buyers named in coverage of the 2025 edition include INLIGHT Coffee, which paid US$495/kg for a Craft Reserves lot (Addis Insight, accessed 2026-07-23).

How the coffee is made

Alo describes its house method as gentle shade drying followed by a slow finish in a “Light-Deprived Environment” (LDE) — drying the coffee out of direct light so it loses moisture slowly and keeps its aromatics. It offers four processing families: natural, washed, hybrid and anaerobic (Alo Coffee Auction, accessed 2026-07-23).

Its auction lots have been reported as variety 74158 — a selection bred by Ethiopia’s Jimma Agricultural Research Center — grown at 2,400–2,580 metres (Addis Insight, accessed 2026-07-23).

To verify

The 2021 Cup of Excellence win. Alo’s own site says its first small lot, from Alo village in Bensa, “won Ethiopia’s Cup of Excellence in 2021”. That is the company’s self-report; no Alliance for Coffee Excellence results page for an Ethiopia 2021 competition was checked here. The wiki’s own Cup of Excellence note records an inaugural Ethiopian edition in 2020, a suspension in 2023 and a return in 2024, and says nothing about 2021 either way.

Which regions, and how many stations. A producer interview posted to YouTube gives a different map — around 13 stations spread across Bensa, Bona, Bora (Sidama), Guji and West Arsi — adding Guji, a zone Alo’s own site does not mention. The station count appears nowhere else. The official site’s list (Bensa, Bona, Burra, Nensebo) is treated as authoritative above (Alo Coffee interview, cited in the research report, not independently fetched, 2026-07-23).

The founder’s surname. A search listing gives the founder as Tamiru Tadesse; Alo’s own site uses only Tamiru. Don’t publish the full name without a better source.

Earlier competition figures. The same interview claims an anaerobic natural scored above 19 (on the Cup of Excellence 20-point scale) and placed first, a natural placed fifth, a first lot sold around US420,000. None of it was matched to an official result sheet.

Ownership and incorporation. No company registry record, incorporation date or ownership structure was found. “Alo Coffee” is a trading name in every source consulted.

Sources

  1. Alo Coffee Auction — about “Echoes of the Peak” — accessed 2026-07-23
  2. M-Cultivo — auction events (lists Echoes of the Peak, hosted by Alo Coffee) — accessed 2026-07-23
  3. Alo Coffee — company site — located via search 2026-07-23; homepage not independently fetched
  4. Addis Insight — Ethiopian coffee hits $1,739 per kilo in record-breaking auction — accessed 2026-07-23
  5. Global Coffee Report — Ethiopian coffee fetches record price at auction — cited in the research report; returned HTTP 403 on access 2026-07-23
  6. Alo Coffee — “Starting Strong in Ethiopian Coffee” (interview video) — cited in the research report, not independently fetched, 2026-07-23

Graph View