FairChainRoasting
FairChain is all about creating shared value chains. A few years back, when the FairChain Foundation was looking to put theory into practice, we immediately sought out one of the largest and most rotten value chains on the planet: coffee.
Only 2% Value Add??
Over the past few decades, the rise of major coffee multinationals (Big Coffee, for short) have made the lives of coffee-producing countries hell. Even as the price of a quality cup of coffee skyrockets, the prices Big Coffee has paid for those beans have dramatically dropped. As a result, today’s coffee-producing countries receive just 2% of the value of the typical cup of coffee. No wonder Ethiopia – not to mention all other countries along the Coffee Belt – depend almost completely on foreign aid for their daily sustenance.
FairChain can end this. We’re already proving it.
300% More Money
The FairChain Foundation teamed up with a single-minded Dutch coffee company called Moyee, which boisterously dubbed itself the World’s First FairChain Coffee Company. The Dutch start-up raised a bunch of cash from like-minded Dutch coffee drinkers to set up a world-class roaster in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. They also introduced a packaging line. And just like that they increased the local earning potential from local coffee. By shifting the roasting and packaging back to Ethiopia (instead of exporting these value-adding activities to the West), Moyee is generating 300% more money locally. That’s what we mean by trade over aid! Now we work with many others.
