YOU, WE AND THE WORLD

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE REASON FOR WHY WE CHOSE THE NAME "COFFEA CIRCULOR" MANY, MANY YEARS AGO. OUR PREVIOUS WORK ENABLED US TO GAIN KNOWLEDGE FROM SECTORS SUCH AS AGRICULTURE, FINANCES AND SUSTAINABILITY TO MENTION A FEW. MOST IMPORTANTLY, HOW TO BEST CHANGE AND IMPLEMENT WHERE NEEDED.

Being involved in the "specialty coffee" industry from an early stage led us to extrapolate nuances of the concept. With time, concepts dilute. Hence, we don't use the terminology 'specialty' and instead refer to 'exceptional' and 'high definition' coffees accompanies by our industry groundbreaking transparency framework. Today, the notion of "transparency", "circular economy", "green economy", "sustainability" among other terminology and statements are widely used. Our inauguration generated a three pillar model that has become standard and what specialty coffee should all be about: Transparency in Trade, Transparency in Pricing and Transparency in Grading. 

Key concepts and mechanisms of this approach are high quality products, socially responsible, environmentally sustainable, impact driven and trustworthy. Collaboration and communication between growers, roasters and baristas removes unnecessary actors and events from the fraudulent value chain. Our approach has set a golden standard in the world of coffee and is continuously being copied.

The coffee industry is an aged organism acting in status quo and is in need of creative injections. Our environment is changing due to irresponsibility. Constantly refining, perfecting and evaluating ideas are stepping stones for our ambition to implement highly necessary change.

We travel and meet the farmers, millers and exporters as often as possible and vice versa. We do not believe in “fair” trades or expensive non traceable certifications anchored in bureaucracy and should be set to rest. “Fair” accentuates poor efforts for making something “honest”, “genuine” and “proper”.

We take on a scientific approach in all we do based on our backgrounds, education and knowledge. This is due to two obvious reasons: science is repeatable and reproducible. Our ideas are original and we don't settle for the monotone. If we were just to roast coffee, it would most likely reduce our drive for change. Therefore, we are not just roasting coffee - we are helping, developing and questioning the status quo. Most importantly, we are not following any trends, a.k.a. waves in the coffee world, we are setting and refining our own guidelines and work plans.

This is Coffea Circulor - the original.

RIGHTEOUSNESS BEYOND FAIR: TRANSPARENCY TRADE

Our work spans across decades. Informally shaped since 1998 and formally established in 2010 with many years of field work with a model anchored in United Nations Millennium Goals, Environment Programmes, NGOs and private sector work. These models are 'ideas' and there is not a one-off-fix. Our interpretation is the need for genuine, ethical and successful implementations. We have documented actions that have today become de facto standards in our industry. Our Transparency Trade and notation has become synonym to how coffee trading should be conducted and is nowadays used by other green coffee merchants and coffee roasting facilities in the coffee industry.

Most importantly, the customer should be able ask for the contact details of the picker, farmer or cooperative in order to ask how much the they were paid for their coffee. However, it is solely in the interest for the customer to decide whether this is essential or not. In due course, it empowers consumers to make conscious decisions while increasing resilience and livelihoods for coffee growers: people have the ability to understand what it takes to produce coffee.

Transparency in trade is often mistaken with the coffee "origin", generic information such as growing altitude or making visits to farms, cooperatives, factories or coffee millers. Transparency is providing in-depth knowledge, expectations and reactions from growers down to customers in the chain of events which implements a complete feedback loop.

This ambition and approach was established by Coffea Circulor in 2009 and has today become an unwritten standard in the world of coffee.

MINDFUL ABOUT OUR PRECIOUS ENVIRONMENT: TRANSPARENCY PRICING

Paid price for coffee is always declared avoiding industry standard hidden outrageous profit margins. Through this we also demonstrate approaches for implementing concepts of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES). Providing in-depth growing and processing knowledge to managers, millers and export agents where applicable create opportunities.

Coffea Circulor has led the development of this approach since our inception in 2010 and is certainly inspiring others in our industry. This level of openness has yet to become standard in the world of coffee due to its financial controversy - not wanting to declare earnings and margins: buy low, sell high, hide margins. There is absolutely nothing special about that and degrades the credibility of something being special. 

CONSCIENTIOUS QUALITY: GRADING

Highly renowned achievements on national and international level, hundreds and thousands of roasted coffees and tasted cups, judging competitions, deep collaboration with industry colleagues enable us to grade coffee with high accuracy given industry standards. The grading also completes the feedback loop of constant input and output by mutual processing information which links farmers, roasters and baristas. 

Initiated and led by Coffea Circulor, this approach sets new standards rather than the pre-set quality score that has been applied further back in the chain of events. The score which is visible on the packaging and for the coffee description (synopsis) for the corresponding product enables a customer to make a conscious judgement.

Learn more about our goals.