Sourcing Sustainable Coffee

Coffee is a key raw material and a daily staple for many of our customers. We understand the importance of sustainable sourcing and are dedicated to ensuring that the way we source our coffee respects both the environment and the communities involved in its production. 

We source coffee from a wide range of origins across the world, including South America, East Africa and Asia. Across both plantation and smallholder producer production systems there are significant environmental and human rights challenges such as climate resilience, water scarcity, living income & forced labour. Growers are now feeling the impact of climate change more than ever, with extreme weather events having major impacts on production which has been a huge challenge in places like Brazil and Vietnam. 

Our commitment and case for action 

We are committed to sourcing sustainably, which means not only ensuring we know where our ingredients are coming from and upholding our sourcing standards, but also working in partnership with our suppliers to continuously address the environmental and human rights impacts of our products.   

At COP26 in November 2021, we committed to ensuring our own brand product supply chains would be Deforestation and Conversion Free (DCF) by 2025, with a cut-off date of 2020. This includes our coffee supply chains, which is why we have committed to sourcing 100% sustainable coffee in all of our own-brand products by 2025. We work with certification bodies, including Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance to uphold our commitment and have maintained long term relationships over the last decade with many farmer co-operatives.  

You can read more about our sourcing requirements for coffee in our policy.  

Traceability and transparency  

We’re proud to source coffee from producers and suppliers who share our values and focus on quality and sustainability. We are committed to building long term relationships with our suppliers and producers and to purchasing coffee responsibly, enabling us to build a more resilient supply chain.  

As part of our Plan For Better, we are committed to reporting transparently on our performance and our supply chain risks. We will be reporting on our 2024 sourcing volumes and certification to reflect progress to towards our commitment.  

Forest-risk due diligence legislation 

We know we need to work with our suppliers and others to tackle deforestation and conversion as a sector and address the key challenges together. Improving traceability in the supply chain is an important step if we are to improve livelihoods and reduce environmental damage. For this reason, we support the introduction of Due Diligence legislation for forest-risk commodities that would ban the sale of products linked to illegal and legal deforestation, including coffee-driven deforestation, and help set clear expectations on traceability throughout the supply chain. 

Collaboration and partnership 

To support our key sourcing regions in tackling climate and human rights risks we are supporting smallholders to invest in different ways of producing coffee that is kinder to the environment and people. In partnership with our supplier Finlays, we have launched a dedicated coffee product which is empowering women and protecting the environment in La Celia, Colombia.    

UK Sustainable Commodities Initiative 

As members of the UK SCI alongside over 130 other members across the supply chain we are working towards the collective goal to achieve sustainable, resilient forest-risk commodity supply chains for the UK market. We are members of the newly formed coffee working group, which explores potential impacts of incoming UK legislation but also wider themes and challenges such as companies’ progress towards the decarbonisation and achieving a living income.