Two wins at the World Coffee Innovation Awards 2023
Jessie May collecting the awards on behalf of the global Raw Material Team, at Caffe Culture 2023
What an amazing addition to an already wonderful Caffe Culture Show 2023. Thank you so much to the panel of judges of this year’s World Coffee Innovation Awards. The panel awarded us first prize in the two following categories:
WINNER
Sustainability Initiative
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Wet mills as community hubs
What is meant by wet mills as community hubs?
This is a methodology which is active through our work in Colombia, and most importantly, Timor-Leste. We began with the construction of our Kickstarter funded community wet mill, El Fénix in Quindío, Colombia. From this approach, we had the blueprints for the construction of several wet mills in key growing areas of Ermera, Timor-Leste.
El Fénix Community Wet Mill, Quindío, Colombia
And since 2018, Timor-Leste has been the main focus of our efforts
Early that year, we met with groups of producers in villages across Atsabe to hear about how the coffee market has served them in recent history. Though there was no immediate consensus on the cost of production, most stated that the price they received for cherries was too low for there to be any profit for investment in coffee. And as a result, they were working in a gathering style rather than active farming.
Individuals with farms larger than 1 hectare explained that hiring people to pick cherries is their largest expense, at a rate of 3 - 5 USD per day. Along with low yields, this gave us a rough idea of the baseline cost of production to work from, and a target for improvement.
Raimutin Community Wet Mill, Ermera, Timor-Leste
With the community, we developed a plan for a prosperous future to solve the challenges preventing producers from selling in the specialty market. In short, these are largely covered by three buckets; financial, legal, technical.
From our experience building El Fénix, we knew an effective and achievable progression for the community was the building of a community wet mill. Wet mills reduce workload, overheads for producers, and provide direct market access for a large number of people at once.
Blueprints for Raimutin
Since then, hundreds of families have connected with these community wet mills. And through this step, they have been able to generate at least 75% more profit from coffee, when compared to trading before the wet mill’s existence.
Members of the community of Raimutin, listening to a presentation by Ameta of Raw Material Timor-Leste
WINNER
Ethical Initiative
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Maximum impact coffee
How does maximum impact coffee work?
Where and how Raw Material works is guided by the places we can have the most impact. This is through the direct work we do, and through partnerships with those who know their communities better than we ever could.
In order to be most effective, we have three main considerations when choosing where & what we do:
To make change possible, we need a powerful strategy. This requires that we make tough choices not just about what we will do, but also what we will not do.
We don’t search for the best coffee. We search for the right communities, and work with them to build systems to produce high-quality coffee, that we connect to a stable marketplace.
When solutions are well designed and community-led, results can be achieved fast. After just one year working with producers in Timor-Leste, the wet mill team produced a coffee that set the national record for quality. Raw Material Timor-Leste then exported over 90% of the communities’ production, at prices double or three times the national average.
We are a UK registered Community Interest Company (CIC). One of the most important facets of this, is that 100% of the profit we generate goes to the producers we represent.
This is important because although the specialty coffee market touches the lives of many people, it does not yet achieve what is possible.
Frequently, the price a farmer receives for coffee is lower than the cost of producing it. This situation leads to cycles of debt and disadvantage that compounds over generations.
Yet whilst this happens on one end of the value chain, the value of the specialty coffee market continues to accelerate.
Coffee’s total market value is expected to grow to over 80 billion USD by 2025. We see this as an exciting opportunity.
This scenario is one of the few crises in the world whose solution is direct and self-sustaining. With the right investments and effort, the demand for high-quality coffee can be supplied by historically marginalised groups, for their long-term improved quality of life, business profitability.