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UTZ Certified: 2009 in Review
January 28, 2010
4 Min Read
BOSTON, Mass.UTZ Certified, a global agricultural sustainability certification program, hit the ground running in 2009 launching the new Good Inside logo and witnessing a substantial interest in sales of its certified coffee, tea, and cocoa. A certification program founded in 1997and based in the Netherlands, UTZ Certified is active in 22 origin countries and in 2007 opened its U.S. office near Boston, as well as sales offices in Chicago, and Montreal, Canada.
Key components of the UTZ Certified program are: improved farm professionalism, increased productivity, cost-efficiencies, and quality, integrated pest management, and improved social and environmental conditions. It is the first certification program to provide online real-time track and trace for all its coffee production, enabling consumers to track their cup of coffee back to the farms where it was grown. The organization will be offering the same program for tea and cocoa in 2010.
We are proud to be working work with mainstream coffee and agricultural commodities around the world to instill better business practices, and environmental and social standards, said Graham Mitchell, UTZ Certified general manager.
The organizations new Good Inside label was a natural evolution from UTZ Kapeh which means good coffee in a Mayan language, to a name which enables the organization to work with more commodities, and is more recognizable to North American consumers.
Coffee Highlights:
Signed up 20 roasters and roaster/retailers including Boyd Coffee Company and Dunn Bros Coffee as well as 7 traders in the US and Canada, including Walker Coffees and the International Coffee Corporation (ICC) in the U.S. and N.J. Douek & Sons and RGC Coffee in Canada. Sara Lee Corp. remains the largest buyer of UTZ Certified coffee worldwide.
Developed relationships with major retailers to carry new sustainable coffees, including Wawa.
Launched a program with IKEA in the U.S. and Canada to sell UTZ coffee at 35 stores nationwide. The promotional program resulted in 10,000 unique hits to the tracer, an online link between the IKEA coffee products and theproducingfarms.
4,000 metric tons (8.4 million pounds) of UTZ Certified coffee was imported into North America (97 percent to the U.S., 3 percent to Canada).
Tea Highlights:
Signed an agreement with the UK-based Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) in September eliminating the requirement of dual certification. Farms that become UTZ CERTIFIED will no longer require ETP monitoring. This move will help streamline the certification process for tea growers and increase the speed at which certified tea enters the market. The agreement was announced at the Canadian Tea Association conference in Niagara Falls, in Ontario, Canada.
Tea growers in India, Indonesia, and Malawi, representing 4,569 hectares of tea gardens and 442 growers, became certified to the UTZ Certified standards. The program will be broadened to Argentina, China, Kenya, and Sri Lanka in 2010.
Cocoa Highlights:
The first UTZ Certified cocoa from Ivory Coast arrived in the Netherlands in November and is now available for the North American market. The UTZ Certified Code of Conduct addresses key issues in the cocoa industry namely threats to indigenous forests, improper use of agricultural chemicals, farmer living and working conditions, and child labor issues.
Palm Oil Highlights:
The UTZ Certified traceability system recorded its 100,000th metric ton of palm oil shipped and traced by the UTZ Certified system and grown according to the standards of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The RSPO program prohibits deforestation as well as child and slave. The palm oil is also available for the North American market.
In addition, the Good Inside Foundation, the U.S.-based non-profit arm of UTZ Certified International Foundation, received its formal 501(c) (3) status in July 2009. The Foundation develops sustainable agriculture projects, training programs, and instructional tools to demonstrate professional farming techniques and caring for people and the environment at origin. The Foundation elected a slate of directors in March, 2009, that included Mitchell as well as Juliette Caulkins, UTZ Certified adjunct and commercial director; Jim Fisher, One Accord Partners food and beverage consultant; Karugu Macharia and Enrique Abril, UTZ Certified/Solidaridad field representatives; and Jim Middleton, an educational fundraiser and former president of Employ-a-bility.
The Good Inside Foundation also joined the Finance Alliance for Sustainable Trade (FAST) in December.
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