Testi Coffee

Testi Coffee is an Ethiopian green coffee exporter based in Addis Ababa, registered as Testi Trading PLC and trading as Testi Specialty Coffee.¹ It buys ripe cherry from smallholder farmers, processes it at its own washing stations in four coffee zones, and ships the finished green coffee to roasters abroad.²³ It was founded in 2009 by Faysel Abdosh Yonis and his wife, and is still run by the family.²³

Two things make it matter beyond the ordinary run of Ethiopian exporters. Its lots have placed twice in a single Cup of Excellence competition under the company’s own name.⁴ And in July 2025 it staged the Faysel Abdosh Signature Auction, the private sale where a lot called Sidama Keramo Super Natural went for US$1,604 per kilogram — the highest price ever reported for Ethiopian coffee at the time.⁵ That sale is covered in full on Black Gold Coffee, the buyer.

The company

Attribute	Detail
Legal name	Testi Trading PLC, trading as Testi Specialty Coffee1
Founded	2009, by Faysel Abdosh Yonis and his wife23
Ownership	Family-owned and family-run — the founder’s son Fahmi Faysel and nephew Yisak Yonis are both involved2
Head office	Kazanchis, Black Gold Complex, 3rd floor, Addis Ababa1
Business	Buying cherry from outgrowers, processing at own washing stations, exporting green coffee3
Zones	Guji, West Arsi, Sidama and Yirgacheffe3
Memberships	ECX, AFCA, the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association and the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce1
Website	testicoffee.com1

The head office address, the memberships and the “family-owned” description come from Testi’s own site, read directly.¹ The founding date and the founder’s name come from its Australian importer, which has published two separate profiles of the company.²³

Where the name comes from. Melbourne Coffee Merchants says Testi is a Harari word meaning happiness.³ That is one importer’s account and no Ethiopian source consulted repeats it, but it is the only explanation on record.

What it actually does

Testi is not a roastery and not a farm. It sits in the middle of the chain, in the role that shapes most Ethiopian specialty coffee:

• It buys cherry. Thousands of smallholders — “outgrowers”, in the trade word — grow coffee on plots often smaller than a suburban block and sell the fresh red fruit by the bucket to whichever station will take it.²³
• It processes. The cherry is turned into dried green coffee at Testi’s washing stations, by the washed route (fruit pulped off, the seeds fermented and rinsed) or the natural one (dried whole in the fruit).² Its importer describes the washed method as soaking parchment-covered coffee in tanks of clean water for 36–48 hours.²
• It also buys parchment. Alongside its own sites, Testi buys part-processed coffee from partner stations.³
• It exports. The finished coffee goes out under Testi’s name to buyers overseas.¹³

This is the step where an Ethiopian coffee gets its identity. Cherry pooled at a station and sold generically loses any trace of who grew it; cherry kept separate and named after the station becomes a traceable lot a roaster can put on a bag. Testi’s business is that sorting decision, repeated across dozens of sites. See Green coffee buying for the wider picture.

The washing stations

Melbourne Coffee Merchants, which has bought Testi coffee since 2018, says the company operates 28 washing stations across Guji, West Arsi, Sidama and Yirgacheffe, and names four of them:²³

Station	Woreda (district)	Zone
Jigesa	Shakisso	Guji — described as the first site Testi built
Hadeso	Shakisso	Guji
Aash	Nensebo	West Arsi
Ayla	Bensa	Sidama

The Bensa station is the one to notice. Bensa is the small East Sidama district that also produced Alo Coffee’s and Basha Bekele’s record lots and Daye Bensa’s Gatta Farm — an unusually dense concentration of Ethiopia’s top results in one woreda.

To verify — the station count and the list

28 is one publisher’s figure. Both the “28 processing sites” and “28 washing stations” statements come from Melbourne Coffee Merchants, a buyer of Testi coffee, on two pages of the same site.²³ That is one source, not two. Testi’s own site names no stations and gives no count.¹

A conflicting count exists. A Chinese-language coffee profile says Testi runs four washing plants, in what machine translation renders as “Ghuket, Yega Sheffield, Sidamo and Lim” — apparently Guji, Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and Limu.⁶ Three of those four match the importer’s zone list; Limu appears in place of West Arsi. Whether “four” means four stations or four regions is not clear from the text. Do not state a station count as fact.

Adorsi. The same page names an Adorsi processing plant as Testi’s.⁶ No other source consulted mentions it.

The 2021 Cup of Excellence results

Testi’s name appears three times in the official ACE table for the 2021 Ethiopia Cup of Excellence — twice as the company and once, with a variant spelling, as an individual supplier:⁴

	Rank	Entered as	Score	Variety	Process	Region / woreda
1	20	Testi Trading PLC (Plantation)	87.97	Gesha	Anaerobic	SNNPR, Bench Maji, Gura Ferda
2	22	Testi Trading PLC Suppliers	87.82	Heirloom	Anaerobic	Sidama, Bensa, Bensa
3	24	Feysel Abdosh Coffee Supplier	87.59	Kurume	Anaerobic	Oromia, Gujji, Oddo Shakiso

Two further entries in the same competition’s National Winners list carry the founder’s name: Faysel Abdosh Yonis, scoring 87.26 with a natural 74112 from Sidama/Bensa, and Feysel Abdosh Coffee Supplier, scoring 86.41 with a natural 74112 from Oromia/West Arsi/Nensabo.⁴

Read the rank-20 row twice. A Geisha grown at Gura Ferda, in the far south-west near the Sudanese border, is not a normal Ethiopian entry — Geisha is the variety that made Panama’s reputation, and Gura Ferda is a resettlement frontier, not a classic specialty zone. The word “Plantation” in the entry name suggests Testi grew this one itself rather than buying it in.

To verify — the spellings and the person behind them

The official 2021 table prints three different name forms — Testi Trading PLC, Faysel Abdosh Yonis, Feysel Abdosh Coffee Supplier — across five entries in three different zones.⁴ Testi’s founder is named Faysel Abdosh Yonis by his importer,² and the auction Testi ran in 2025 is called the Faysel Abdosh Signature Auction.⁵ The names line up, and the natural reading is that one man and one company are behind all of it.

No source consulted states that connection. ACE publishes the entrant names as filed and nothing else; Testi’s own site never mentions a Cup of Excellence result.¹ Ethiopian naming uses a given name plus the father’s and grandfather’s names rather than a fixed surname, and Faysel / Feysel is a routine transliteration split — so the same person can appear under several forms and two different people can look identical. Treat the 2021 rows as entries under names matching Testi and its founder, not as a proven single record.

A trade-show exhibitor listing separately gives Testi Trading PLC’s CEO as FAYSEL ABDOSH, and an Addis business directory lists the company at PO Box 22376 with the same phone numbers as its website.⁷⁸ Neither was re-checked here.

The 2025 signature auction

On 16 July 2025 Testi ran the first Faysel Abdosh Signature Auction in partnership with the trading platform M-Cultivo. The top lot, Sidama Keramo Super Natural, sold for **US1,604 per kilogram** to **[[Black Gold Coffee]]** — then a national record, beaten about eight weeks later by [[Alo Coffee]]'s **[[Echoes of the Peak]]** sale at US1,739/kg.⁵

A “signature auction” is a single-seller sale: one exporter offers its own coffee, sets its own catalogue and invites bidders, with no blind jury and no qualifying score. That makes it a very different object from a Cup of Excellence auction, and the two get filed together constantly. See Green coffee auctions for the distinction, and Premiumisation for why one bag clearing 200 times the ordinary export price says little about what the neighbouring farm was paid.

The full price record, the missing catalogue and the unanswered questions about the buyer are documented on Black Gold Coffee and are not repeated here.

Project Direct

Project Direct is Testi’s community programme, funded out of its coffee business and aimed at the districts its stations buy from. Two independent sources describe it: its importer says it has funded four primary schools and one high school plus clean water and electricity infrastructure,³ and a separate profile records a primary school completed in Guji in July 2016.⁶ Testi’s importer also describes investment in “the wellbeing of the thousands of outgrowers that deliver cherry to Testi’s sites.”²

This is worth recording precisely because Black Gold Coffee notes that Project Direct was named in coverage of the 2025 auction as a beneficiary of the proceeds, with no supporting document. The programme itself is now corroborated. How much of the US$1,604/kg reached it, or reached any farmer, is still undisclosed by anyone.

To verify — the auction's charitable claim

Reports of the 2025 sale present Project Direct as receiving auction proceeds. The programme exists and predates the auction by at least nine years.³⁶ No source consulted links a specific sum from the auction to it.

Who buys Testi coffee

• Melbourne Coffee Merchants (Australia) — an importer, sourcing Ethiopian coffee from Testi since 2018 and the most detailed public source on the company.²
• Cafe Public (Canada) — sells a retail bag identified as coming from Testi Specialty Coffee.⁹

To verify — Big Sur Coffee's Ethiopian stations

A café guide states that the Shanghai roaster Big Sur Coffee’s Ethiopian lots come from Testi’s washing stations, naming Gara Agena, Yaye/Masincho, Faysel Abdosh and Sewda. Those four station names do appear on Big Sur’s shop, and one of them is a station literally named Faysel Abdosh, in a place Big Sur lists as Bura Keramo — the same Keramo as the 2025 record lot. The guide is the only source for the Testi link, and Testi’s own site names no stations.¹ See Big Sur Coffee, where this was first flagged. Not established.

To verify — two unrelated "Black Gold"s

Testi’s head office is in the Black Gold Complex in Kazanchis, an Addis Ababa office building.¹ The buyer of its 2025 record lot is a company called Black Gold Coffee, whose country and business type are themselves unconfirmed. Nothing connects the two, and “black gold” is a common nickname for coffee. Recorded here only so the coincidence is not mistaken for a relationship.

To verify — Taste of Harvest

A Chinese-language profile headlines Testi’s Adorsi plant as a “TOH champion” and explains TOH as Taste of Harvest, the AFCA quality competition.⁶ Testi is an AFCA member, which makes entry plausible.¹ But the page gives no year, no score, no national or regional round, and no result table, and no AFCA document confirming a Testi win was consulted. Do not state that Testi has won Taste of Harvest.

What is not established

Recording the gaps so the ground is not re-covered:

To verify

• Farm ownership. Testi is repeatedly called a “producer and exporter”, and its rank-20 Cup of Excellence entry is labelled “Plantation” — but no source consulted states that Testi owns or manages farmland, or how much.⁴⁹
• Altitudes and varieties by station. None of Testi’s own material publishes elevation, variety or cup score for any named station.¹
• Volume and turnover. No export tonnage, revenue or employee count appears in any source read here.
• Prices. Beyond the single US$1,604/kg auction lot, no green coffee contract price, differential or retail figure for Testi coffee was found.

Related

• Black Gold Coffee — the buyer of the US$1,604/kg lot at Testi’s 2025 auction, and the fuller record of that sale
• M-Cultivo — the platform the signature auction ran on
• Alo Coffee · Echoes of the Peak — the neighbouring Ethiopian producer-exporter whose own private auction beat Testi’s record two months later
• Daye Bensa · Basha Bekele — the other Bensa names at the top of Ethiopia’s results
• Bensa · Sidama · Guji · Yirgacheffe · West Arsi — the zones its stations sit in
• Ethiopia — the origin, and how its coffee reaches export
• Cup of Excellence · Alliance for Coffee Excellence — the competition its lots placed in
• Taste of Harvest · African Fine Coffees Association — the African competition it is a member body of
• Ethiopia Commodity Exchange · Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority — the exchange it belongs to and the regulator above it
• Washed process · Natural process · Anaerobic fermentation — the processing routes across its lots
• Geisha · JARC 74112 · Kurume — the varieties in its competition entries
• Green coffee buying · Green coffee auctions · Premiumisation — the trade mechanics behind a US$1,604 kilo
• Big Sur Coffee · Melbourne Coffee Merchants — buyers linked to Testi coffee

Official links

• Official site — Testi Coffee

Footnotes

1. Testi Coffee — official site — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the Testi Trading PLC / Testi Specialty Coffee naming, the Kazanchis head-office address, the family-owned description, the contact details and the ECX / AFCA / ECEA / Chamber of Commerce memberships ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

2. Melbourne Coffee Merchants — Spotlight on Testi Specialty Coffee — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the founder’s full name, the 2009 founding, the family roles, the four named washing stations, the 36–48 hour washed soak and the “since 2018” sourcing relationship ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

3. Melbourne Coffee Merchants — Testi Coffee producer page — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the 28 washing stations and four zones, the cherry-and-parchment buying model, the Harari name meaning and the Project Direct school and infrastructure figures ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

4. Cup of Excellence — Ethiopia 2021 official results — confirmed via WebFetch; source of every rank, score, variety, process and woreda in the 2021 table and the two National Winner entries ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. Qahwa World — Historic record set at Ethiopia’s first signature coffee auction — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the 16 July 2025 date, the organisers, the lot name, the US$1,604/kg price and the buyer ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Gafei — Testi Coffee Company, TOH champion Adorsi processing plant — confirmed via WebFetch; machine-translated Chinese profile, source of the TOH / Taste of Harvest explanation, the Adorsi plant name, the four-washing-plant claim and the July 2016 Guji school ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

7. Seoul International Cafe Show — TESTI TRADING PLC exhibitor listing — reported CEO name and PO box; not re-checked here ↩

8. AddisBiz — TESTI TRADING P.L.C business directory entry — reported Addis Ababa listing and phone numbers; not re-checked here ↩

9. Cafe Public — Naess, Ethiopia Testi — retail listing naming Testi Specialty Coffee as producer and exporter; not re-checked here ↩ ↩²