On the slopes of Mount Elgon in Uganda, Christine Latigo is Administration Manager of the Sipi Falls Estate, a collective of more than 20,000 smallholder coffee farmers. Latigo and the farmers produce coffee with a conscience, fostering practices that are beneficial for the land and growers alike. Ethically grown beans are a selling point for roasters and consumers, and Latigo has partnered with Era of We, an innovative organisation that helps growers like her to market their sustainability credentials.
Era of We has a digital platform that facilitates direct relationships between coffee producers (the farmers), facilitators (traders and impact programmes), roasters and consumers. According to Niklas Löfberg, CEO of Era of We: “Our purpose is to make coffee valued by its sustainability. As a farmer, you can connect to this supply chain downstream and market yourself in terms of your coffee, your story and how you relate to sustainability both in the environmental and social perspective.”
Era of We partnered with the cloud service company Opsio to create its digital platform. Opsio's part was to leverage cutting-edge cloud technologies from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to power Era of We's initiative for sustainability and transparency. In its initial design, Opsio had to take into account the ever-evolving needs of Era of We as the platform expanded and became more complex. Sustainability was intrinsic to the platform architecture and mirrored Era of We's approach to the coffee industry. For Andreas Johansson, CEO of Opsio, “Leveraging this technology makes it very sustainable because you don't use more than you need to. What we've built is a very autonomous and very scalable platform.”
Era of We gives roasters a direct connection with coffee farmers
For consumers who value sustainability, product provenance is a crucial consideration, and companies are coming under increasing pressure to demonstrate better environmental and social practices in their supply chains. “Being able to trust sustainability credentials is an essential part of marketing,” says Löfberg. In order to gain that trust, traceability and transparency are essential. Attaching data to coffee proves that it has originated from a particular place, and helps to ensure non-deforestation and reduce carbon footprint.
Seeing sustainability data clearly
Providing this visibility isn’t easy, as supply chains can become complicated. The Supply Chain Worldwide Survey revealed that 70 per cent of the companies surveyed perceive their supply chain as “very” or “extremely” complex; they need to know what is happening upstream and downstream in their supply chains to provide transparency to consumers. The Era of We Platform does this by mapping sustainability data at every point, creating value for those who can market their good credentials. “The commercial value of sustainability is defined by the consumer engagement and works its way backwards,” says Löfberg. “If we can connect roasters more directly with the farmers and to where the coffee is grown, then the platform can provide relevant information all the way to the coffee cup.”
For Christine Latigo and the Sipi Falls Estate collective growers, the platform has had a transformative effect. “The platform has reduced our interaction with middlemen, giving us direct access to coffee buyers,” says Latigo. Awareness of the Sipi Falls brand has also increased, not least among coffee roasters interested in buying its sustainable beans. “The platform boosted sales volumes by 14 per cent between 2021 and 2023,” says Latigo. “This led to quality and yield improvement on the farms, which increased farmers’ incomes and livelihoods, and directly contributed to the empowerment of local women.”
Using several core AWS services, Opsio’s task was to build a platform that could integrate the complex data of the coffee market, creating a user-friendly design that facilitated connections between producers, facilitators, roasters and consumers. According to Andreas Johansson: “We knew that everything had to come together securely, swiftly and at scale. Only a combination of cloud-based services and modern DevSecOps principles could bring together a system with such global scope and complexity. In simple terms, the journey from the bean to the cup now takes a trip through the clouds.”
Andreas Johansson, CEO of Opsio (left), and Niklas Löfberg, CEO of Era of We (right)
Scalable impact
The AWS infrastructure behind the platform also gives Era of We the ability to scale. “We have big ambitions, and we want to make a big impact. This means we must onboard multiple companies, and a lot of information should flow through our systems,” says Löfberg. “The support from both Opsio and AWS has been excellent in creating that kind of infrastructure.”
Market visibility is important in both directions along the coffee supply chain. Consumers and buyers want to see suppliers’ sustainability credentials, and farmers want clear information on market prices and practices. The Era of We platform has multiple features that enable this transparency. Era of We provides roasters with automatically generated QR codes that they can print on their packaging. These contain supply-chain information, so consumers can check the sustainability credentials of the brand and the product, including products sold in traditional offline channels.
The platform allows customers to trace their coffee from farm to cup using a QR code
For Niklas Löfberg, Era of We’s aim is clear. “We want to provide a platform to help all parts of the coffee trade gather and connect under one umbrella so that sustainability becomes fundamental to the commercialisation of coffee.” Broader use of platforms such as his could help to make sustainability fundamental across multiple industries and sectors. For the coffee trade specifically, more visibility in its supply and value chains will enable companies to grow sustainably and ethically.
For more information visit aws.amazon.com/partners
