The coffee is similar to civet coffee, or Kopi Luwak, another exorbitantly expensive variety extracted from the excrement of the weasel-like civet.
An elephant's massive stomach provides a bonus, however. It takes between 15-30 hours to digest the beans, which stew together with bananas, sugar cane and other ingredients.
After years of tests and other research, Mr Dinkin settled on Thailand as the best location for his enterprise.
Later, Mr Dinkin took decision to collaborate with the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation.
The foundation takes care of 13 elephants, saved from the streets of Bangkok, where their mahouts used to take them begging. Now this foundation's elephants have been working as coffee-bean processors.
The foundation pays the mahouts 15,000 baht a month for the use of their elephants, and Black Ivory Coffee pays the mahouts' wives 80 baht per kilogramme of coffee beans recovered from the dung.
Currently, all the coffee is sold directly to the Anantara hotel group, which has properties in Thailand, the Maldives and Abu Dhabi.
