Volcafe Way

24/11/2020

Founded in 1851, Volcafe is one of the top three coffee merchants sourcing 12% of the world’s export of market. Specialists in worldwide green coffee procurement, we provide beans for 80 billion cups of coffee a year

We founded Volcafe Way in 2014 as a unique global approach to sourcing high-quality coffees sustainably, largely focused on generating sustainable profitability for producers and helping them manage the social and environmental challenges they face.

Donors/Partners:

In this program we cooperate commercially with many roasters. Additionally, we have also partnered with the NGO Fundación Paraguaya to pilot their ground-breaking multi-dimensional poverty index assessment technology, the Poverty Stoplight (Semaforo de Pobreza).

Key activities:

Through Volcafe Way and its 250 agronomists and technicians we:

  • provide direct technical assistance to farmers, helping them to continually improve their coffee quality, farm productivity and yields;
  • train farmers in sustainable production and good agronomy;
  • help producers manage social and environmental challenges and risks, gather data and focus on measurable results that green-buyer customers can monitor and verify;
  • create business-model farms: learning hubs in which surrounding communities can exchange best practices

Our focus on farm profitability is at the core of our Theory of Change. Therefore, we focus on:

  • Intervention at the farm level;
  • Consistent farm profitability;
  • Close working relationships between producers and Farmer Support Organization (FSO) teams;
  • Business and agronomy advice that’s informed by detailed cost-of-production data derived and analysed on a farm-by-farm basis;
  • Connecting producers and roasters in direct, long-term sourcing relationships.

Signature projects/tools:

  • Our Volcafe Way experts have developed an app that allows us to capture and analyze all field-related data and track the sustainable profitability ‘progress’ made by our coffee families.
  • For information on projects, please check the Volcafe Way website: www.volcafeway.com.

Priority countries and corresponding areas of activities

Volcafe Way is now active in ten countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America: Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Tanzania and Uganda.