Much of the cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, and cocoa powder enjoyed around the world comes from our operations in Ilhéus, Itabuna and Altamira. Joanes is our acclaimed brand produced for the Latin American Food Ingredients industry.
Customers from across South America have the opportunity to work with our team at our Ilhéus Innovation centre, collaborating on product development, proof of concept, and refining existing application recipes.
We are one of the top three coffee exporters in Brazil. Our main office is in Santos, supported by 15 other locations including estates and offices. We are both easy to access and have a broad on the ground presence all year round.
We supply locally grown roast, ground and soluble coffee to international customers in the USA, Europe, Middle East and Japan.
At our fully integrated Milano coffee estate in Western Bahia, we produce premium Arabica coffee. The plantation is CAS – 4C Code of Conduct compliant and certified by Rainforest Alliance and UTZ. In addition, we procure large volumes of differentiated and certified coffees from growers, working closely with agri-input companies to help deliver a quality service to the farmers.
Our coffee portfolio also includes specialty coffee – a niche but growing sector. We have a Q certified laboratory recognised as a SAC Premier Training Campus by Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA).
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How do you differentiate between the environmental impacts of organizations across different geographies, local conditions, products, local regulations etc.?
For several years, ofi has been working towards assessing the true value (cost or benefits) of some of our operations on the ground. Our latest case study on Natural Capital Valuation: Assessing Natural Capital costs in coffee operations, delves into year-on-year monetary impact of our select coffee growing operations in five origins.
Globally, an estimated 12.5 million to 25 million smallholder farmers depend on the coffee industry for their livelihoods, according to figures from Fairtrade1 and the FAO2. However, the majority of these farmers face significant challenges including limited access to formal agronomy training, inadequate resources, small farm sizes and insecure land tenure. These factors often hinder the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, which are crucial for preserving Natural Capital over the medium and long term. As a result, coffee production often imposes a cost on nature in the form of GHG emissions, degradation of soil structure and fertility, depletion of ground and surface water, and loss of natural ecosystem services critical to agricultural production.
To address these challenges, we employ Natural Capital valuation techniques, which leverage environmental economics to assign a monetary value (US$) to our impacts and dependencies, encompassing carbon emissions, water usage and ecosystem services. Quantifying Natural Capital in this way enables us to assess and mitigate risks while fostering investments that promote a positive impact on landscapes and ecosystem.
We evaluated twenty AtSource+ coffee farmer groups sourced from five different origins3 to assess their GHG emissions and water use related Natural Capital Costs (NCC). Reporting on the NCC is based on each metric tonne of product which makes the cost intensities very sensitive/ dependent on farm level yields. Thus, understanding the underlying yield dynamics is also crucial for interpreting these NCC footprints effectively.
The combined expertise of our local sustainability teams with partners such as Funcafé, TechnoServe, Côte d’Ivoire's National Nutrition program, USAID (United States Agency for International Development), and Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) delivers solutions to improve access to clean water, healthcare services and supplies, and nutritious food.
Initiatives range from using geo-location to identify and screen for infant malnutrition in farming communities in Côte d'Ivoire - where one in five children experience stunted growth and development - to fortifying key staples with vitamins and minerals in our processing facilities.
Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) have become increasingly valuable in helping us understand and tailor our interventions. They help us identify children at risk of, or in a situation of child labour, so that we can engage with families to improve and enable school attendance through training and facilitation of necessary certificates for example.
Drawing on best practices by the Fair Labor Association and the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), CLMRS has been scaled up to cover all nine of our direct cocoa sourcing countries, coffee in Guatemala, cashew in Nigeria and 100% of our hazelnut sustainability programmes in Turkey. To date, our CLMRS systems covers over 260,000 farmer households.
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