Some tidbits from the big four:
- J.M. Smucker Completes Acquisition of Rowland Coffee. Smucker will now own Café Bustelo and Café Pilon as well as Folgers. Yippee.
Love the old school can.
- Sara Lee in talks for Brazil coffee brand. Sara Lee aiming to acquire or merge with Marata. Sara Lee already controls 22% of Brazil’s retail coffee market, and purchased Brazil’s Café Damasco last year.
- How Kraft sells sustainability. Marc Gunther is a fellow member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and has written a piece on how Kraft is trying to find ways that sustainability can drive growth. The company has determined that over 60% of its environmental impact comes from its supply chain, from the growing of agricultural products, including coffee. Gunther gleans the thoughts of Kraft’s VP of global sustainability (wait for it…) Steve Yucknut. This comes as Kraft announces that they are increasing their sustainability goals for the next few years. These goals include sourcing 100% of European coffee brands sustainably. The latter article again mentioned the 50,000 tons of Rainforest Alliance coffee Kraft purchased in 2010, which I will again remind you represents less than 7% of their total coffee purchases. They have a long way to go.
- In an effort not to leave out the last, and largest, of the big four corporate coffee roasters, I took a look at Nestlé USA’s 2010 corporate responsibility report. Coffee was not mentioned. I did dig up a a piece on the reduction of the carbon footprint of Nescafé single-serve machines. You can just talk amongst yourselves on this one.
A reminder that my real job as a bird researcher means I’m pretty preoccupied in the month of May, but I have some meatier posts coming up when things slow down.
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