Safras & Mercado Sees Brazils Crop For Coffee Year 2022/23 At 611 Million Bags
Keurig Green Mountain, Inc. has announced the launch of Green Mountain Coffee Organic a new line of premium coffees that are both organic and Fair Trade Certified. This launch marks the first collection of a double certified line of Green Mountain Coffee ever available for the Keurig hot brewing system. With this new Organic line, Green Mountain Coffee has also unveiled a new look, including new branding and a refreshed logo and packaging.
Green Mountain Coffee Organic K-Cup pods are now available on Keurig.com, and will expand to retail starting in July. The four varieties at launch include three single origin coffees Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, Peru Cajamarca, Sumatra Aceh and one artfully crafted blend, Founders Blend.
All purchases of our new Green Mountain Coffee Organic line helps support the coffee growing communities we work with through a variety of social, environmental and economic initiatives, said Lindsey Bolger, Senior Vice President Coffee Sourcing and Relationships. We are so proud to share these four exceptional organic and fair trade varieties with our consumers.
Green Mountain Coffee Organic coffees are available for the Keurig hot brewing system, and include the following varieties:
Green Mountain Coffee Organic coffees are available in 10- and 16-count boxes.
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Fair Trade And Social Justice
About 700 miles due south, where GMCR has been sourcing Fair Trade coffee since 2004, Fair Trade is impacting another South American community in a different way. A community bank, established by Fair Trade premium funds, is a pioneering entity in Agua Azul, Peru providing important financial services to the community. While you wont find tellers and checking accounts here, the bank renders economic empowerment opportunities to the community.
Acting more as a local micro-financing cooperative than a bank, members contribute money on a weekly basis and then vote on micro-finance loans requested by different bank members to fund. The most surprising thing about this bank is that of the approximately 20 bank members, all but one are women. Through the bank, women gain financial literacy skills and are empowered to make important choices and decisions in their community. A community and bank member, Maria Sabina Hernandez Cueva, explains that the bank has provided a lot of opportunities for women and that, “Fair Trade doesn’t discriminate against color, gender, race or religion.”
A Brief History Of Fair Trade Coffee
Long before Fair Trade certification was created, coffee prices were regulated by the International Coffee Organization under which the International Coffee Agreement was negotiated, at the United Nations, in 1962.
A Coffee Study Group was formed to set quotas on coffee importing countries to prevent excess supply and to avoid any drop in overall price.
The ICA continued for 5 years and was renewed in 1968. After a severe frost in Brazil, the worlds leading coffee producer, the agreement was renegotiated in 1976. This was due to a sharp increase in coffee prices.
A series of negotiations ensued over the next decade to establish quotas in order to address supply and demand on the world coffee market and to install stricter import and export regulations.
Quotas continued till 1989, but were suspended when no agreement could be reached. As a result, without quotas, coffee prices dipped to an all time low between 1990 and 1992.
A public forum was established in 1994 with open access to official documents to hopefully decide on future quotas and stabilize the coffee economy.
The agreements of 2001 and 2007 went further toward addressing 3rd world living standards, sustainability, economic education, and promotion of coffee consumption.
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Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Expands Fair Trade And Organic Certified Coffee Line
Submitted byKeurig Green Mountain, Inc.
WATERBURY, Vermont – Green Mountain Coffee, Inc. announced today that it has fully integrated coffees formerly marketed under the Frontier Organic Coffee brand into its line of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Fair Trade and organic certified coffees. This consolidation of the Company’s Fair Trade and organic certified coffee line creates one of the broadest selections of double-certified specialty coffees available in the U.S. under one brand. Green Mountain Coffee, Inc., acquired the Frontier Organic Coffee brand from Frontier Natural Products Co-op of Norway, Iowa, in June 2001.
Green Mountain Coffee’s extensive line of double-certified coffees includes single-origin, blends, dark roasts, Swiss Water Process decaffeinated, and flavored coffees. The Fair Trade and organic certified selections are offered in a wide variety of formats to meet customer needs, including bulk, 10-oz. and 12-oz. bags, institutional fractional packages, retail fractional packages, and in the Keurig K-Cup.
Trouble Brewing: Has Success Spoiled Green Mountain
Not long ago, Green Mountain Coffee and its chief executive, Bob Stiller, were hailed as corporate-responsibility pioneers. Green Mountain was the world’s largest buyer of Fair Trade coffee. The company offset the carbon emissions of its energy use and won a “green power” award from EPA. Twice, it topped CR Magazine’s list of the 100 best corporate citizens.
Today, Keurig Green Mountain , as it is now known, remains a corporate-responsibility standout. But the Vermont-based firm has a dark stain on its reputation. Since acquiring Keurig, the inventor of a single-serve coffee machine and its patented K-Cups, the company has become the driving force behind what critics say is an environmental scourge the throwaway coffee pods made of plastic and aluminum foil that waste energy and materials, and are all but impossible to recycle.
Meanwhile, Stiller, an ex-hippie who briefly became a billionaire, was forced out of KGM after going on a spending spree with borrowed money, acquiring a 164-foot yacht, a $10m, 7,500-square-foot Palm Beach mansion and a $17.5m Manhattan condo formerly owned by New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Green living, that’s not.
What went wrong with Green Mountain? In a word, success. Its story challenges easy pieties about doing well by doing good. This is a company that has done very well but only by setting aside, at least for now, the environmental values it once held dear.
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Green Mountain Coffee Fair Trade Rainforest Blend Ground Light Roast Coffee 12oz
Green Mountain Rainforest Nut coffee offers a sweet nutty flavor subtly enhanced with hints of vanilla and caramel. This is a long time favorite of many Green Mountain coffee drinkers.
Rainforest Nut is a lightly roasted, Fair Trade Certified coffee and is deemed Kosher by the Orthodox Union.
One 12 ounce bag.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters: With Commitment To Fair Trade Comes Great Responsibility
Looking back, 2013 was a rough year for coffee, but also a year of great opportunity. Coffee market prices saw one of the biggest price slumps in decades, and a severe outbreak of a coffee leaf-killing disease called coffee rust or “la roya” decimated crops and affected about 75 percent of Central American coffee farmers.
Despite these market challenges, some businesses were still able to celebrate profits, and consumers were still able to drink their daily cup of coffee. But its the unseen coffee farmers who continue to bear the burden. Thats why supporting Fair Trade for the health and sustainability of coffee-growing communities is more important than ever.
Fair Trade levels the playing field by providing financial means to improve communities and create new opportunities for education, healthcare or advancing the way farmers run their businesses. Since 2000, GMCR has delivered more than $22 million in community development funds to coffee farmers around the world helping fund schools, community centers and better access to healthcare. At the source, the beginning of our coffee supply chain, it is easy to see the impact of Fair Trade in empowering coffee-growing communities and why GMCR believes so strongly in this movement.
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What Is Fair Trade Coffee
Fair Trade Coffee is an ethical standard of coffee trading, which has gained popularity over the last 25 years, in order to benefit the 25 million small coffee growers who live in 3rd world countries.
In order to meet the conditions of Certified Fair Trade Coffee, the farmers are required to join a co-op with other local growers in their region. These co-operatives regulate how fair trade premiums are distributed and the workers are insured a minimum price, plus a premium for trade that exceeds the minimum, based on every pound produced by the small farmers.
Rise And Fall From Green Grace
Stiller had become a billionaire in 2011 , but his wealth was tied up in company stock. To fund purchases that included the mega-yacht, homes and land in New York and Florida, not to mention a small Vermont air charter company, he borrowed money against his stake in Green Mountain. When the company came under attack from hedge fund manager David Einhorn and other short sellers, the stock price tumbled and Stiller was required by his lender, Deutsche Bank, to sell 5m shares.
The stock sale fell outside of an approved transaction window for insider sales, and he was forced out as chairman of the board in 2012 as a result. “I am really shocked and hurt,” Stiller told CNBC at the time. About his lifestyle, Stiller said: “I’ve worked all my life building this company and it’s been successful. I want to enjoy it. Whether it’s living lavishly, I think that’s all relative.”
KGM executives point out that disposal of the coffee pods represents only a fraction of the company’s environmental impact. Growing and roasting coffee, manufacturing machines and pods and shipping all have a larger impact.
“We are trying to make sure that we are focused on the things that matter most,” says Suzanne DuLong, a vice president at KGM. But the company acknowledges that at least some of their consumers care about the waste issue.
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Our Responsibility Is To The Land And Its People
We stand for goodness
Crafting high quality coffee year after year is not easy. The farmers we work with do their best to consistently harvest high quality beans, but it’s hard workand their livelihoods depend on it. Weve built our company on what they do, so were committed to supporting them and their community.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Was The Other Coffee Company Who Pioneered Fair Trade Partnership Back In 2000
Founded on the opposite side of the U.S. in 1981, Green Mountain began as a small cafe in Waitsfield, Vermont.
The company went public in 1993
Green Mountain is a recognized leader in the award winning specialty coffee arena, innovative brewing technology, and environmentally and socially responsible business practices.
The first paragraph of their Statement on Fair Trade:
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, inc. has actively supported the Fair Trade movement since 2000, when we first partnershipped with Fair Trade USA, to help bring fair trade to mainstream coffee drinkers. Today, fair trade enables us to continue to provide high-quality coffee to consumers, while helping to improve the quality of life of coffee-growing farmers and their families around the world.
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How Is Gmcr Doing
Green Mountains success is best reflected in the rise of its stock price. From 2007 to 2010, GMCRs stock rose by more than 2,700 percent, while the S& P 500 declined by 8 percent. From Green Mountains initial IPO in September 1993, its stock had increased by 15,400 percent, significantly better than the S& P 500s 165 percent gain.Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., Annual Report 2009, accessed April 16, 2010, .
The Complex Challenge Of Convenience
Solving it will be devilishly hard. KGM’s best-selling K-Cups are made of No 7 plastic, a blend which can’t be recycled in most places. They have an aluminum lid, which is hard to separate from the cup and, of course, they are filled with wet coffee grounds when they’re disposed. Even if the plastic, aluminum and coffee could be separated, the pod is too small to be handled by most recycling systems.
“The pods are not really viable for any end-of-life scenario and, furthermore, they even prevent the coffee grounds from being composted,” says Adam Gendell, a packaging expert at nonprofit GreenBlue.
You’d think a compostable pod would solve the problem, but it’s not that simple. The Keurig packs must keep coffee fresh before brewing, withstand the heat, pressure and strength demands during brewing, and be easily puncturable with a needle as part of the brewing process, the company explains. Most compostable materials are unable to maintain quality or freshness, or to perform successfully in the Keurig system.
For now, Keurig sells a reusable mesh pod, but it doesn’t sell many, which is no surprise. A key selling point of the Keurig system is convenience a reusable pod has to be cleaned after each use, like a conventional coffee maker.
“Keurig and Green Mountain, much to their credit, are really investigating this problem,” Gendell says. “They want to find a solution.”
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Java Man Is Newest Billionaire
Bob Stiller Profile
Sometimes entrepreneurs really do become billionaires overnight. Thats what happened to Robert Stiller, the founder of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters . The value of his 12% holding in Green Mountain perked up 42% last Thursday and is now worth just over $1 billion. The jump came just after his Vermont coffee company announced a strategic relationship with Starbucks . Green Mountain, also the owner of Keurig Single-Cup brewing system, will now make, market and sell Starbucks and Tazo tea K-Cups.
I profiled Stiller as Entrepreneur of the Year nearly a decade ago in a 2001 Forbes cover story. At the time, his stake in the company was worth $89 million. I tried to reach him again this week, to no avail, but I recall his story well.
Stiller, who is probably now 67, was a born entrepreneur. His first big hit was selling rolling paper on the drug-sodden campus of Columbia University in the early 1970s. His brand, E-Z Wider, had double the width of competing brands. The paper wouldnt feed into the machine properly, causing tearing. Stiller figured out a way to prevent ripping and eventually made a small fortune. People expected to see potheads, but we were more efficient at paper conversion than any manufacturer at the time, he told me back then. He and a partner sold out in 1980, each pocketing $3.1 million.
Pioneers In The Fair Trade Field
In 1986 Equal Exchange was founded as a co-op in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts by 3 idealistic students: Rink Dickinson, Jonathan Rosenthal, and Michael Rozyne.
Their vision was to innovate the food market system by supporting small farmers and furthering principles of honesty and fairness in business practices that can help benefit farmers as well as consumers.
It all began with fairly traded coffee from Nicaragua and has gone on to become a success story.
There is no doubt that many Indigenous people have benefitted from these alternative markets and their standard of living has improved somewhat.
In a Global Market dominated by corporate giants the likes of Monsanto, the achievements of a small alternative movement are something to marvel.
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Fair Trade Usa Names Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc Worlds Largest Purchaser Of Fair Trade Certified Coffee
GMCR makes $300,000 grant to Fair Trade USA Launches Green Mountain Coffee Campaign to Support Fair Trade Month
WATERBURY, Vt. & OAKLAND, Calif.—-Fair Trade USA, the leading third-party certifier of fair trade products in the United States has named Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. , a leader in specialty coffee and coffee makers, the largest purchaser of Fair Trade Certified coffee in the world for 2010. In calendar year 2010, GMCR purchased over 26 million pounds of Fair Trade Certified coffee.
GMCR has actively supported fair trade since 2000, when it first partnered with Fair Trade USA and committed to bring fair trade coffee to mainstream coffee drinkers. Through its family of specialty coffee brands, GMCR makes fair trade coffee available through specialty and mass retailers, grocery, club and convenience stores, offices, quick-serve restaurants, and online. The Green Mountain Coffee® brand offers the largest selection of Fair Trade Certified coffees in the United States.
GMCR recently made a $300,000 grant to Fair Trade USA to support the Fair Trade Towns and Fair Trade University programs. These programs unite volunteers in local communities and colleges to encourage fair trade purchases, and increase consumer awareness and understanding of the role fair trade products play in fighting poverty and protecting the environment.
About Fair Trade USA
About Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.
GMCR-C
The Journey Behind The Brand
Headquartered in Waterbury, Vermont, the small town where Ben & Jerry’s is based, Green Mountain began its life as a single Vermont cafe in nearby Waitsfield. The oft-told story is that Bob Stiller stopped by for a cup of joe in 1981 and liked it so much that he bought the place. He was prescient: Long before the boom in the specialty-coffee industry that made Starbucks a household name, Stiller saw that there was money to be made in selling high-quality coffee.
Green Mountain was Stiller’s second startup. Previously, he and a friend co-founded E-Z Wider, a rolling paper company, that they later sold for $6.2m. “I used the product. But I don’t think we were obsessive dopers,” Stiller once said. Stiller was clearly shaped by counterculture, studying with Deepak Chopra, practicing meditation, embracing environmentalism and adopting a business decision-making process called “appreciative inquiry”, a business discipline that focuses on positive change. David Finney, the president of Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, where the business school is named after Stiller, has described him as “a very spiritual guy”.
Green Mountain grew slowly at first. It opened stores in New England , sold coffee by mail and expanded its organic offerings. It struck distribution deals with Mobil Oil gas stations and McDonald’s in New England, and partnered with Newman’s Own, another corporate-responsibility leader.
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