Philippine green coffee,
sourced direct.

Binhi is a UK importer of rare and heritage Philippine green coffee, working direct with farming communities across the country. We bring origins the specialty trade has overlooked to roasters willing to look beyond the familiar.

Why Philippine coffee is rare

In 1880, the Philippines was the fourth-largest coffee exporter in the world. By 1887, after rust had torn through Brazil, Africa, and Java, it was briefly the only source of coffee on earth. Kapeng Barako — the Liberica grown in Lipa, Batangas — sold for five times the price of Java. The Spanish Queen Regent elevated Lipa to a city in 1887 in recognition of the coffee trade alone.

Two years later, the rust reached the islands. By 1891, Philippine coffee production had collapsed to a sixth of what it had been. Most farmers walked away. Brazil reclaimed the market. The world's attention moved on, and never really came back.

But the coffee didn't disappear. In the Cordillera highlands of Benguet, in the volcanic uplands of Bukidnon, in the historic Liberica heartland of Lipa, families carried their heritage varieties forward — quietly, without a market to speak of, for more than a century. Today the Philippines is one of the few places on earth where all four commercial coffee species grow: Arabica, Robusta, Excelsa, and Liberica. Around 90% of what's produced is now Robusta. The heritage Arabicas and the Liberica are the survivors. The Slow Food Foundation lists both Benguet Arabica and Kapeng Barako on their Ark of Taste — a register of foods that exist only because people refuse to let them disappear.

They are still disappearing. Philippine coffee productivity has declined an average of 2.5% every year for the past decade. Farmers are shifting to pineapple in Cavite, banana in Davao, coconut and sugarcane in Batangas — crops with predictable buyers, predictable prices, and no need to wait three years for a tree to bear. Heritage varieties are slowly being replaced with easier, lower-grade cultivars. Without a market, the coffee goes. Without the coffee, the knowledge goes with it.

Why us

The Philippines is one of the great agricultural countries no one talks about. The same islands that grew coffee for the world in the 1880s also grow some of the finest cacao, the oldest rice terraces still in cultivation, hand-woven textiles that take months to finish, and crafts refined across generations. Most of it never leaves the country. What does leave tends to be the commodity version — the bulk export, the lowest common denominator — while the heritage work, the specialist work, the work that takes decades to learn, goes uncelebrated.

We started Binhi because we think that's the wrong way around. The farmers growing heritage Arabica at 1,700 metres in Benguet, or carrying Liberica forward in Lipa, are doing some of the most skilled agricultural work in the world. They aren't holding on out of nostalgia. They're holding on because what they grow is genuinely better — and because the alternative is to walk away from something their families have spent generations getting right.

What's been missing isn't quality. It's demand. Without a market, even the most exceptional crop disappears — replaced by whatever has a buyer this season. Binhi exists to build that market: to give Philippine coffee, and eventually the other goods that share its predicament, the global stage they've earned. Every roaster who takes on a Philippine origin is a reason for a farm to keep going.

Binhi was founded in 2026 by cousins Raphael Cardona and Christian Penilla.

How we work

We source direct from farmers. No intermediaries between the farm and the roastery. Every coffee is traceable to the community that grew it, the region it came from, and the process it went through.

Our current range covers three origins. We're actively building relationships with farms across the Philippines — if you're looking for something beyond what's listed, tell us.