If the pre-shipment sample is approved, the rest of the coffee is milled, sorted for defects, sized, re-bagged for shipment, loaded into a 10' X 20' container for export, and put on a container ship to the United States  to be transformed into roasted coffee. 

Removing Imperfections

There are three ways to sort coffee beans for defects:

By Hand: Coffee is sorted by hand removing all of the defects at individual and group tables.

By Hand With Conveyor Assistance: A conveyor belt slowly moves coffee down a line of people, usually women, and they pick out the imperfect beans and remove them from the conveyor belt.

By Machine: A mechanized system moves the beans through a chute at a controlled rate, while a "mechanical eye," programmed to sort beans by color, blows a puff of air to remove discolored, defective beans from the line of production.

Most of the coffee from Equal Exchange's producer partners is sorted by hand.