Specialty green coffee traders, sourcing from 26 origins on behalf of over 1000 roasters.
Falcon was born out of the conviction that the coffee industry has the potential to drive enormous socio-economic change and harness environmental stewardship across a geo-political landscape that is home to both vulnerable communities and fragile ecosystems. Our purpose is to help drive this change.
We achieve this by focusing on quality. Improved quality increases household revenue through price premiums. Improved incomes are the economic incentive to better social and environmental practices. Higher standards combine with higher quality to drive market demand.
Coffee supply chains are deeply complex, covering difficult terrain over vast geographies. Our role is to organise, train and connect rural, smallholder farming communities with the urban, digitally driven markets their coffees serve.
For roasters we provide;
• Consistent quality
• Deep origin knowledge
• Supply chain data
• Traceability to farm level
• Price risk management
• Logistics
• Inventory finance
• Market intelligence
For farmers we provide;
• Agronomy training
• Post harvest processing training
• Price risk management
• Market access
• Logistics
• 70 staff members
• Based in 7 countries
• Across 5 continents
• Sourcing from 26 origins
• From an estimated 550 000 farmers
• On behalf of more than 1000 roasters
• 87% certified, verified, traceable
Falcon Offices
Origins
We seek to improve the economic outcomes in coffee supply chains. To change the culture from profiteering to nurturing, where we share the responsibility of environmental stewardship and social cohesion.
Global Citizenship is the concept that one’s identity transcends, even as it respects, geographical and national borders and that our social, political, environmental and economic actions occur in an interconnected world.
For Falcon, Global Citizenship means embracing diversity, treating everyone we interact with, including one another, with dignity and respect.
We seek to have a positive impact wherever we trade.
As a business, we consider the resources we deplete, the energy we consume, the waste we generate and the carbon we emit.
We live these values through the Blueprint Project, within the pillars of Environmental Stewardship, Social Upliftment and Good Governance.
Includes energy efficiencies, carbon footprints, deforestation, biodiversity, pollution mitigation and waste management.
Includes labor standards, racial justice, human rights, community relations, supply-chain management and social justice issues.
Includes company structure, strategic sustainability oversight and compliance, and performance related projects
We focus on QUALITY FIRST. Quality drives market demand at premium prices, immediately impacting household revenue. Quality demands training and investment, opening the door to Good Agricultural Practices and incentivising improved environmental stewardship.
In 2008, The Gates Foundation awarded a $47 million grant to TechnoServe, a global non-profit organisation, for The Coffee Initiative. Launched across Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia, the initiative focused on improving smallholder coffee farmers’ income through climate smart farming methods, improved processing and direct sales channels. TechnoServe grouped farmers into cooperatives, installed eco-pulpers and provided training on agronomy and financial literacy. The infrastructure and training was supported by market access through the introduction of trading companies like Falcon Coffees.
Key to the success of this model was support by local banks to provide working capital to these new business groups to purchase coffee cherries from their farmers. Banks in Ethiopia had never provided credit to small holder farmers before and were reluctant to do so, threatening the entire Ethiopian leg of the initiative.
Falcon enabled the program to continue by standing as financial guarantor for 115,00 farmers in Western Ethiopia. We placed $416,00 of our equity in a Standby Letter of Credit for four years, triggering access to working capital for the farmer groups.
The outcome challenged Ethiopia coffee lore. In the first year of washing their coffees, these Western Ethiopian cooperatives took 1st, 3rd and 5th
place at the national Taste of Harvest competition, upending the myth that the best coffees in Ethiopia come from the southern states of Yirgacheffe, Sidama and Guji, alone.
This partnership gave birth to some of the most famous cooperatives in Ethiopia today; Duromina, Nano Challo and Yukro.
At the end of the four-year initiative, the western cooperatives formed their own coffee union called Kata Muduga. Thirteen years on and the union has grown in strength to be the largest organic forest-coffee producer group in Ethiopia, if not the world, today.
Falcon Coffees continues to be a strategic partner and the largest buyer of the Kata Muduga Union. We are proud of our legacy together.
Trust, training and shared resources formed the bedrock of this partnership. The focus on quality and market access continue to underpin our shared success since 2009.
Esha Chhabra has been writing about the cross-section of business and impact for over a decade, covering companies around the world that are trying to
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