Up in the lofty Blue Mountains of eastern Jamaica, where daybreak must sift through the early morning mist, lies Mavis Bank, and a small rural town. This is the site of Jamaica’s exalted “black gold”, the home of the Mavis Bank Central Factory, the domain of the world’s beloved blue Mountain Coffee.

The Mavis Bank Factory was built on just five acres of land in 1923, when Victor C. Munn, an English planter and processor, established what would become a family business for generations. In the 1940-1950, the coffee planters of the Blue Mountain region were sending their harvests to the factory of Mavis Bank, where the coffee was processed. Two other depulping machines were still in function at that time, but on a cooperative basis. Coffee planters of the region can actually boast of a long lineage between their family and Mavis Bank's Jablum's Blue Mountain Coffee. Mavis Bank Central Factory, which was destroyed by fire in 1955, has been rebuilt and modernised by Victor Munn's nephew, Keble Munn, with the help of an English  trading company - Thomas Hankey & Co. - which then sold the coffee harversted on this property. The original name of the Munn's property has been left behind and is now relegated to memory.