Cafédirect

Cafédirect, the UK’s largest Fairtrade hot drinks company, has successfully launched a single origin cocoa drink from São Tomé and Principe. The project worked closely with growers helping them form a cooperative and ferment and dry their cocoa.Before this farmers were selling ‘wet’ cocoa beans to local traders and were missong out on the opportunity to add value themselves, set themselves high quality standards and sell directly to the international market.

Infrastructure has been put in place for the fermentation and drying of cocoa beans at the 11 farmers’ associations within the cooperative. This has involved setting up stores, fermentation boxes in fermentation huts and drying tables. In addition, each association has formed a team to put in place a procedure for the purchase and collection of wet cocoa and these teams have received training by CIAT (the local technical agency for quality) on the theory and practice behind good quality cocoa production and processing.  Senior management have also been trained on international cocoa pricing, the futures market and export documentation.

A Fairtrade Committee at the producer organisation is now set up and farmer members have received training on Fairtrade requirements.  The FLO application was successful and inspection and certification has been completed. This enabled CafeDirect to launch the cocoa drink which is selling well.

Green Tea from Rwanda:

Another part of this initiative aimed to develop a new green tea product with the Sorwathetea factory and its supplying growers in Rwanda. Work went well on the technical side and the product was tested and approved by CafeDirect. Unfortunately, as a result of the world economic downturn, it was decided that a new green tea was not commercially viable and the project was halted. Work did continue to support development of capacity of the cooperative supplying the factory.