Cherukattoor · Western Ghats · 11°35′N
A coffee-curing house that opened the year India launched its first satellite — and that has spent fifty years on the same red-clay road into Mananthavady.
Moolakara was incepted in 1976 as a coffee-curing mill by Mr. M.C. Thomas. The first machine on the Mananthavady road did the quiet work of hulling, grading and de-stoning — the unglamorous middle-leg of every coffee that leaves Wayanad.
The mill quickly captured the attention of coffee farmers in Wayanad and Coorg. Over the next thirty years, M.C. Thomas built impeccable relationships with hundreds of small growers and the Coffee Board of India. The client list on the curing-house ledger came to include some of the biggest names in the country: Nestle, ITC, Allana & Sons, Vidya Coffee and NKG Jayanti.
In 2017 the same family that ran Moolakara Traders re-incorporated the firm under the Companies Act 2013 as Moolakara Wayanad Spices Pvt. Ltd. — and the same year, registered a grower-led collective, the Wayanad Agricultural Society. Both earned Fairtrade certification. What had been a domestic curing house became, almost overnight, an origin-direct exporter.
Mr. M.C. Thomas commissions a coffee-curing mill on the road from Mananthavady to Panamaram — the village of Cherukattoor (postal 670721).
The mill becomes a fixed point on the regional coffee calendar. Direct supply contracts emerge with Nestle, ITC, Allana & Sons, Vidya Coffee, NKG Jayanti — all serviced as Moolakara Traders.
A four-stage processing line goes in — huller (15 t/hr), grader, sorter and de-stoner — sized to handle the post-monsoon clearing surge without losing parcel identity.
The grower-members organise as the Wayanad Agricultural Society (Fairtrade FLO 38805). The mill incorporates as Moolakara Wayanad Spices Pvt. Ltd. (CIN U15549KL2017PTC051552; Fairtrade FLO 38806).
The first containers leave Cochin for Antwerp and Rotterdam. The buyer roster opens with G. Bijdendijk B.V. in the Netherlands and Volcafe Italia in Trieste.
Cofi-Com Trading Pty (Sydney) starts lifting Wayanad Robusta into the Australian specialty market.
Public customs data records 24 export shipments to 16 named buyers across Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia. Coffee remains the lead line; pepper, ginger and turmeric ride along on the same documentation.
Plans to add an Arabica plot to the in-house list of cured beans — the first variety addition to the curing-house product mix since 1976.
Son of the founder M.C. Thomas. Carries the curing relationships built by his father into the export era — handles trade and farmer-side decisions out of the Cherukattoor office.
Co-director and second signatory on the company registration. Oversees the Fairtrade reporting cycle and the Wayanad Agricultural Society's grower-member premium ledger.
In its curing-only years (1976 – 2017), Moolakara supplied beans to many of India's most recognisable food and trade houses. The roster below is historical — included for context.
Open a conversation with the trade desk. We'll send a 500-gram sample, a Fairtrade FLO statement and a phone call.