The EU is currently drafting new legislation to curb deforestation, and Paulig supports this aim. As a sustainable company, we want to promote sustainable change in the food & beverage industry and offer well-being, tasty products and a viable natural environment for future generations.
Paulig is one of the most sustainable coffee roasteries in the world and buys coffee only from sources verified sustainable by a third party. In our own operations, we are committed to preventing the risk of deforestation and invest in curbing climate change, the traceability of our raw materials and sustainable sourcing. Our Code of Conduct for Suppliers and the requirements of our certification partners also require our partners to commit to identifying deforestation risks and defining measures to tackle them.
At product level, deforestation risks are tackled by sourcing certified raw materials as well as sourcing raw materials through our verified sustainable partnership programmes. We know the origin of our coffee and, in coffee sourcing, we have long-term partners and well-established sourcing chains as well as areas from where we source our green coffee.
Paulig’s most important sourcing country is Brazil, which is the source of more than half of our green coffee. In Brazil, we source coffee from farms that are located more than 2,000 kilometres south of the Amazon rainforests. This means that our coffee is not farmed in or sourced from the Amazon rainforest areas. Our second most important sourcing country is Colombia (about 22%). About 5% of our coffee comes from Nicaragua and less than 3% from Honduras. In total, we have about 20 sourcing countries. In these countries, we are able to trace our coffees all the way back to the coffee cooperatives and producer communities and even to individual producers. Traceability is especially important in allowing us to identify potential risks as well as genuinely improve agricultural practices and ensure that biodiversity is conserved in countries of origin.
Cooperation and continuous improvement
We do a lot of preventive work in the countries of origin. Over the years, we have supported more than 100,000 coffee farmers through our partnership programmes. We also have our own farmer communities, where we support farmers in concrete ways through training and incentives in adopting even more sustainable agricultural practices. We invest in curbing climate change and seek to improve productivity in current farming areas so that there will not be pressure to expand farming to new areas. For example, the amount of land used for coffee cultivation in Brazil has actually decreased thanks to the adoption of more efficient agricultural practices.
“We currently have multiple sustainable development projects underway. However, sustainability work consists of continuous improvement that takes changing expectations into account and requires long-term cooperation. The EU-level legislation being drafted to curb deforestation is a good thing and we support the proposal because it imposes the same sustainability and deforestation prevention requirements on all actors,” Lea Rankinen, Paulig’s Director of Sustainability & Public Affairs, says and continues:
“Coffee is often mentioned as a product that involves a potential risk of deforestation. However, this does not mean that the coffee imported to Finland has caused deforestation, as sustainable coffee roasteries take deforestation risks into account and work systematically to prevent them. However, it’s a good idea to try to make sustainable choices when shopping. Overconsumption should be avoided, and you should learn more about the product you bought. Sustainably sourced and made coffee can be drunk without any worries, and every bean deserves to be enjoyed.”