What is a coffee factory in East Africa?

In Kenya, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, a factory is a wet mill - the facility where freshly picked cherry is brought for processing. The word is industrial-era vocabulary that predates modern agricultural terminology and stuck, particularly in Kenya where the factory system is closely tied to cooperative ownership.

A Kenyan coffee factory typically serves the smallholder farmers in its surrounding area. Farmers deliver cherry by weight at intake; the factory pulps, ferments, washes, and dries it collectively; and the cooperative sells the resulting parchment through Kenya's auction system or directly to overseas buyers.

The quality of a factory's management - how rigorously cherry is sorted at intake, how carefully fermentation timing is controlled, how attentively the drying beds are turned - has a direct bearing on cup quality. Which is why the factory name appears on Kenyan green coffee specifications. Gichatha-ini, Ndiaini, Kagumoini - these aren't just provenance markers. They're quality signals.