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Article: Coffee entrepreneur brews export lessons for SA.(Business Report)
- Article from:
- The Star (South Africa)
- Article date:
- April 21, 2009
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Independent News & Media PLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The founder of Cafe Britt, Steve Aronson, is living proof of how Costa Rica has successfully quadrupled its per capita economy over the past 20 years.
A self-confessed child of the Vietnam war, which left him fascinated with Costa Rica's "social contract" (the fact that it has not had an army since 1948), Aronson originally came to the country as a buyer for a UK-based commodity trader. He stayed on after refusing promotion in his native New York, instead starting a company in San Jose supplying coffee to the gourmet - or as he terms it, "fringe" - market. "But I soon realised that the only way to succeed in agriculture was to add more value."
It was ...