Fazenda Santa Lúcia

Santa Lúcia is one of the family farms in the Carmo Coffees group. It is owned and managed by Helcio Carneiro Pinto. Helcio grows predominantly Yellow Bourbon, with some smaller amounts of Red Bourbon, Yellow Catuaí, Yellow Catucaí, Acaia and Mundo Novo. Originally, each of the family farms processed their own coffee, but over the last few years this has moved to Fazenda IP, the farm of Helcio’s brother-in-law. Amalgamation of processing into one area has helped with efficiencies of scale and enabled the group to invest in larger machinery. The harvest from each farm is kept separate from delivery to final drying and full traceability is maintained throughout the process. While continuing to grow coffee, Helcio also has cereal and beans. The cereal and beans are processed at Santa Lúcia along with arable crops from the other family farms. The splitting and centralisation of both types of crops has allowed for greater specialisation of the teams. Crop diversification, and the means to process the crops, is a common theme among coffee growers. The Carmo farms have been able to take this to the next level, sharing resources and space, and using their combined scale to achieve more together than the farms could separately.