On a rainy afternoon last week, a coffee processing facility in the capital's Akaki-Qality District was abuzz with activities.

The three-storey processing plant lies in an expansive compound not far from Bole Lemi Industrial Park. The ground floor is used for storage, where raw and processed coffee bags are piled high. Nearly a dozen workers were busy lifting the heavy sacks and carrying them to the floor above.

Fregenet Bekele, operations manager at the facility, stood nearby, closely watching the loading and unloading. She looked weary.

"We've been really busy, especially since March," she told Fortune.

The workers heave the sacks to the second floor, where the latest coffee processing machinery manufactured by Cimbria, a company headquartered in Denmark, is installed. The Danish firm is a leading global supplier of equipment for the processing, handling, and storing of grains and seeds. Two workers dump the contents of the sacks into a de-stoner machine that removes pebbles and clods from the coffee beans.

It is the first of a five-step process to turn the beans into a high-quality and high-value global commodity.

The next step involves a cylindrical grader - a machine that separates the beans based on size. From there, the coffee enters a gravity separator and an optical sorter, designed to detect defects by identifying the beans' size, weight, and colour.

Sentayehu Gulelat, 45, is a senior machinery operator at the facility. He was posted by the dust chamber, a machine to reduce the particles released into the air during the processing.

"I'm happy to be working here," said Sentayehu, who earns a gross salary of 19,000 Br.

At this point, the machinery ceases to be a part of the process as the beans are hand sorted. A dozen women seated in a long row are entrusted with the task.

"Hand-sorting is a vital part of producing speciality coffee,” said Fregenet.

The facility belongs to Testi Trading Plc, one of the leading exporters of Ethiopia's most valuable commodity for the international market. Incorporated with Faysel Abdosh and his wife as shareholders with an initial capital of two million Birr, Testi has been in the coffee industry for 13 years. The facility in Qality is one of 20 the company operates across the country. They are part of the 100 or so coffee processing plants busy refining over 262,000tn of the cash crop for export this year.

It brought the highest in foreign currency the country ever generated.

Sentayehu has seen the ups and downs of the coffee industry during his career as a machinery operator for 16 years. He has rarely seen it this busy.

Export revenues exceeded 1.2 billion dollars over the first 11 months of the year, according to data obtained from the Coffee & Tea Authority. It is over a third higher than what exporters brought last year and smashes the record of 987 million dollars five years ago. The bonanza has led the authorities to review their export targets. They hope to see nearly 290,000tn of coffee exported before the year is out and generate 1.3 billion dollars in revenues.

It is a piece of rare but welcome news for an economy battered by political instability, resurgent insurgency and civil war fueling inflation, foreign currency crunch, and loss of federal revenues. However, experts and industry insiders differ on the factors that led to the record-breaking performance. They see a global supply deficit brought on by droughts in Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, profoundly affecting the Ethiopian coffee industry.

The impact of the drought in the South American nation was quick and compounded by global trade disruptions due to restrictions and lockdowns imposed to fight the pandemic. With more people forced to stay indoors and limit their activities, the global coffee industry began transforming in 2020. Global consumption last year, mainly of Arabica and Robusta varieties, was 11 million tonnes. There was a shortfall in supplies.

"The shortage pushed prices up in the international market," observed Faysel, general manager of Testi Trading.

Brazil accounts for a third of the world's coffee trade, with Vietnam and Colombia accounting for another third. Over 200,000hct of coffee farms in Brazil were hit with four rounds of frost, decimating harvests. It was the worst disaster to befall the country's coffee growers in four decades. Brazil's coffee harvest dropped by over a quarter to a little more than three million tonnes – its lowest in the last decade.

Brazilian officials estimate another 660,000tn will be lost this year due to the environmental calamity. It is over by 100,000tns the US Department of Agriculture forecasted in December last year. Low harvests in Vietnam, Colombia, and Honduras added to the supply deficit.

The shortage spurred global prices for Arabica to new heights. They rose by over 40pc to 2.8 dollars a kilo last year, according to the International Coffee Organisation (ICO), whose composite price is used as a benchmark. By January this year, a kilo was selling for four dollars.

Testi Trading sold for between 3.2 and 4.5 dollars a kilo, though some of the beans went for much higher. Premium coffee from Ethiopia fetched as high as 10 dollars a kilo this year, three times higher than its regular beans traded in New York. Half of all speciality coffee was sold at an auction in the world's financial capital; the regular beans were sold through negotiations as Faysel's company did.

Not only is the coffee supply forecasted to drop, but Russia's war in Ukraine caused a shortage of aluminium needed for packaging. Logistical hurdles caused by Russia's war in Ukraine continue to push prices up for the world's most popular agricultural commodity.

Coffee exporters from Ethiopia have been quick to respond to the situation. They shipped 270,000tn last year and earned a quarter of the country's total export revenues of 3.6 billion dollars. Encouraged by the proceeds, exporters repeated the performance over the first three quarters of this year, generating 910 million dollars.