Community & Business
30 September, 2025
Coffee reputation builds
IT’S a long way from Colombia, but Sergio Londono is relishing his role as Head of Coffee at Jack Murat coffee producers in Mareeba.
Not least because their product just won silver at the prestigious Sydney Royal Fine Food Show last month, an accolade that puts their roasted beans on the go-to list across the country.
“This was our first year participating in it,” Sergio said.
“We decided to participate with four different coffees in three different categories, Latte, Espresso and Plunger, and we won silver.
“But also, the only gold medal that was won in the competition, was by a roaster in Brisbane that is called Coffee Mentality – they use 100% our beans.
“So technically we won the gold medal through this roaster.”
The success has put Mareeba coffee in the spotlight, with Upper Barron coffee growers, Crater Mountain Coffee, tying for the Bronze medal at the competition.
“The Tablelands is quite a coffee production region,” Sergio said.
“But we have found most of the people don’t even realise that Australia grows coffee.
“Here in Australia, we can find some small coffee plantations in Northern NSW and south Brisbane, but close to 80% is produced on the Tablelands.”
Jack Murat coffee has been established since 2014 and is run by the family. It was named after Hymet Murat, affectionately known as Jack, who immigrated to tropical north Queensland in search of opportunity in 1929 at just 16 years old.
Starting as a woodcutter, he eventually acquired land and it is at this family farm where today’s coffee is grown, harvested and roasted.
So how did a coffee specialist from Colombia find himself in an award-winning position in Mareeba?
“It was a bit of luck to arrive here and start to work in Jack Murat,” Sergio said.
He worked in the coffee industry in Colombia for 13 years as a grower, taster, roaster and a coffee shop owner.
While visiting family in Brisbane on a holiday two years ago, they had made a trip to Far North Queensland.
“We looked at the coffee industry here. I was trying to contact a coffee grower and met Jamal from the Murat family. We got talking, to see if we can do something together, and my expectation was never to stay here for living, but I fell in love with Far North Queensland and here I am!”
And he hit the ground running.
“One of the game-changing things that we introduced in the last year was a colour sorting machine,” he said.
“We use it to sort the different qualities of the coffee. So, for our coffee we only process the ripe cherries. We don’t use the under-ripe or over-ripe cherries, we only use close to 97% of ripe cherries. It makes a big difference in terms of specialty coffees.
“When we talk about Colombian coffee, one of the most important things is that it is handpicked so we can guarantee in Colombia that the coffee will be almost completely ripe.
“That is what we are having here, when you check our coffee, it looks like it has been handpicked, it goes by colour.
“It’s an amazing technology actually.”
Another big change was to introduce processing different micro lots of coffee, more batches of fermented coffee.
“The fermentation process increases quality of the coffee. We start to create more exotic and different flavours,” Sergio said.
“So, when people start talking about a coffee that tastes like dark chocolate, red berries, and many other characteristics, these flavours are created naturally through the fermentation process.”
And yet another big step since Sergio “came into the game” was the decision to establish a coffee shop in North Bondi, called “Jacks”. It roasts the beans from the farm on site.
The rest of the Murat coffee is exclusively roasted at the farm and sold online, or at Tablelands to Tabletops and at the Shish restaurant.
“We grow, we harvest, we roast and we deliver,” Sergio said.
“One of the things we are trying to teach people is that there is nothing like a local product in terms of freshness. And in terms of sustainability, Australian coffee is even more sustainable than any other coffee that most of the people drink here in Australia.
“Because we don’t use pesticides, transport costs are quite lower, the coffee is not taking two to three months travelling across the ocean to reach here, so yes, that does make a big difference.”
How does Mareeba coffee compare to Colombia?
“In terms of processing it is 100% different, because in Colombia to pick the coffee that we pick here we would need about 300-400 workers. And here we have four workers and two harvesters,” Sergio explained.
“Just in those terms, we have a big competitive advantage. But also here on the Tablelands we have really good conditions to grow coffee very similar to Colombia.
“So, we can say that production is quite different, but in terms of quality we can say that the coffee that we have been producing is pretty much like a Colombian specialty coffee.”
For more information on Jack Murat coffee visit their website at www.jackmurat.com
