The Green Coffee Company (GCC) has taken another step towards becoming the world’s largest producer of arabica coffee by tree count after acquiring an additional 533 acres of active coffee land in Colombia’s Santa Barbara region.

The coffee farm group, which became Colombia’s largest coffee producer in July 2022, said the acquisition adds 1,500,000 coffee trees to its production capacity, bringing its total coffee tree count to 11.5 million.

The largest arabica coffee producer in the world on-record controls 13.5 million coffee trees, according to GCC.

“At GCC, we only need to acquire farms with an additional 2,000,000 trees to become the world’s largest known arabica coffee producer. We are excited to meet this milestone in the near-term with many outstanding farm acquisitions already in due diligence that would push us well into the world’s number one position by tree count,” GCC said.

The Colombian coffee farm group is currently seeking to raise $25m in a Series C equity round. The investment will enable GCC to build a US-based coffee roasting operation.

GCC’s previous funding round reached $9.6m in December 2021.

Headquartered in the US with operations based in Medellin, Colombia, GCC is part of The Legacy Group, an alternative asset manager that targets profitable investment opportunities with high social and environmental impact in Latin America.

Colombia is the third-largest coffee producer in the world by volume, behind Brazil and Vietnam, although it has the highest annual production of arabica coffee.