Amigos International | Responsible Trade & Consultancy

International Launch of Ananda Chocolate at Biofach 2010!

Amigos International — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:44:00 +0000

The booth of Amigos International radiated a special party atmosphere during Germany’s organic tradefair Biofach 2010, which ran from 17 to February 20. After all, after two years of hard labour, Ananda Chocolate was now finally born and presented to the international public. To groovy music, three beautiful “Ananda’s” – dressed in fair-trade-organic cotton – served the World’s first chocolate in compostable packaging, and it was a coming and going of many organizations. Wholesalers from Europe, America and Japan, but also local shops such as Buys & Ko from Wageningen, Velp and Simply Delicious from Velp and the Estafettes came along, all with strong interest in Amigos’ Ecuadorian specialty chocolate - and coffee as well! Also, tree-saving chocolate Organic Meltdown’s Matt was present in the Amigos booth. Furthermore, the Amigos spoke with many potential partners from Senegal, India, Congo, Mexico and Bolivia about the development of new projects to boost food processing SMEs in Southern countries. John Otters, intern at Amigos International, spoke with producers and certification bodies about the 100% PICO concept.

Launch Ananda Chocolate In Europe – EKOPLAZA THE HAGUE

Amigos International — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:26:08 +0000

Ananda Chocolate was introduced in the week before Christmas to the Dutch public at Ekoplaza The Hague, the largest Dutch organic supermarkets. Despite the delay of the boat that brought the chocolate, which was 100% produced in Ecuador, to the Netherlands and despite the snow storms during that week in the Netherlands, the launch was a huge success. The environmentally conscious shopping Hague public was impressed by the natural-fiber box and its the elegant design. Customers were pleasantly surprised that the biodegradable inner wrapper (Foil4Soil) could be disposed of in their green bin (”Why isn’t more chocolate packaged that way?”). When tasting the chocolate, there was an enthusiastic response to the full flavor of the pure Ecuadorian cocoa. Favorite was the sugar-free “Bye Bye Sugar!” In the picture we see from left to right: Bjorn, Hemmy and Samantha Ekoplaza Den Haag and Jerome Kruft of Amigos International, who was on-site personally for three days to relate the story behind the bar to customers. Of course there was also delicious Escoffee served. This coffee-brand’s new product was also launched: Escoffee covered with Eschocolat.

Read a recent INTERVIEW WITH JEROME KRUFT about PICO by PhD magazine NonSense.

Amigos International — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:36:05 +0000

Read…

Escoffee wins Golden Cup… again!

Amigos International — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:34:57 +0000

It is a great pleasure to announce that Escoffee has won the Taza Dorada Competition 2009 in Ecuador, for the second year in a row! Like in 2008, it was voted again to have the best fragrance, aroma, flavor, acidity, body, uniformity and cleanliness (cupping criteria) in the entire country. (In 2007, Escoffee came in 3rd)

The competition, organized by the national association of coffee exporters ANECAFÉ, is held every year among Ecuador’s coffee farmers and associations. This year, the competition was held on home-turf, in the southern province of Loja. The Escoffee farmers, who live in the cantons of Olmedo, Chaguarpamba and Paltas harvest organic, shade-grown, hand-picked Arabica coffee. The quality depends also on proper wet-processing of the coffee. Amigos International has been providing pulping machines for Escoffee farmers to add value to their coffee cherries.

The winning farmers receive besides the honor a high monetary premium for his or her winning coffee. Fernando Granda (see below, left), 24 years of age, won the first prize in 2008. He has been a coffee farmer for 10 years, as he started learning the ropes with his father during his adolescence. He grows his Caturro and Criollo varieties of Arabica on 2 hectares of land. His hope is to increase the productivity, as he only harvested 10 quintals (453 kg) of green clean coffee. In this respect, Amigos International’s funding of a nursery (‘vivero’) has been very valuable; here he can buy seedlings at cost – he plans to buy at least 2.000 plants. Fernando is single, likes to play sports (football and volleyball) and will be an active member in the to-be-established coffee association in Olmedo-Chaguarpamba (ACOPOC). This association is to become Fair trade certified in the year ahead.

On behalf of the 250 Escoffee farmers in the province of Loja and quality roasters Escoffee S.A. in Guayaquil, Amigos International would like to thank all of you for your support of the brand during the last 6 years. One of only a few PICO products in Europe, Escoffee has grown in a fantastic way - now available in organic food stores, fine restaurants, offices and university campuses across the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Finland, UK, and as of December in Spain.

Escoffee beans officially declared best coffee of Ecuador

Amigos International — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:36:45 +0000

Escoffee farmers received the first prize in a competition organized by the National Association of Coffee Exporters ANECAFÉ. The competition was held on home-turf, in the southern province of Loja.

Escoffee farmers harvest organic, shade-grown and hand-picked Arabica coffee. Proper wet-processing of the coffee is of supreme importance to its quality; a method which requires professional skills and passionate commitment. According to the jury’s choice, Escoffee farmers succeed in carrying out this process very well and have thereby produced the highest quality coffee in Ecuador.

Amigos International has been providing pulping machines for Escoffee farmers to add value to their coffee cherries. They have also funded a coffee nursery that enables farmers to buy high quality seedlings of coffee plants.

The winning farmers receive a high monetary premium for their winning coffee.

Specialty Coffee from India

Amigos International — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:19:02 +0000

In Kerala, South of India, Amigos International is initiating an organic farming coffee project. This project concerns a gourmet Robusta coffee, which is often, unjustly, seen as inferior to the Arabica coffee plant. The Robusta plant is – as its name suggests – more robust than the Arabica plant and produces a coffee that has a sharper taste. When the coffee is washed en carefully selected, it is delicious. Traditionally all French and Italian espresso coffees of high quality used to be produced with Robusta beans. It wasn’t until

the large scale growth of inferior Robusta in Vietnam and Brasil, that the plant came to be discredited.

India has always gained international fame and respect with the Robusta coffee that she produced. Especially in the south of the country (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala) a vital coffee culture is embraced by the people.

A legend tells that around the year 1600 AD a Muslim pelgrim who returned from Arabia smuggeld seven coffee seads in his walking-stick. He planted these in the south of India. Four centuries later, the coffee grows between the high trees of the South Indian forests. In cooperation with local NGO’s Amigos is now developing a ‘ready to go’, 100% PICO coffee for the Indian and international market.

Interested roasters can contact us here, interested retailers for future roasted & packed PICO coffee please use the contact field on the right.

WORLD PREMIER: Very first chocolate bar with 100% biodegradable inner foil!

Amigos International — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Ananda Chocolate: Bliss in a 50 gram bar!

Scientists agree: chocolate makes you happy! ‘Ananda’, means ‘ecstasy’ in Sanskrit and Pali, and is a Buddhist term coined millennia ago, when cacao only still made the Amazon Indians, the Mayans and Aztecs happy. By now, cacao’s benefits are well-known worldwide. About fifty grams of dark chocolate every day is recommended for your health, in large part due to its happiness-producing particles, so-called ‘Anandamides’. Of course it’s also the sublime taste of the premium Ecuadorian cacao which gets you a step closer to the blissful state of ‘Ananda’.

But we don’t want to just make consumers happy. Producers should be happy too! So we buy the cacao at Fair Trade prices, and have the bar Produced start to finish In Country of Origin (PICO), thus generating extra jobs for processors in the South. Think of the roasting, conging and blending of the cacao; the design and production of the packaging; the packing of the bars and the administration that comes with it all. All this constitutes value added for Ecuador.

Finally, the Earth is happy as well with Ananda Chocolate: the ingredients are organic, and we can boast to have just about the most environmentally friendly packaging one can imagine: a box made from trees that are managed responsibly under the PEFC standards (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification); we print with vegetable-based ink; and our WORLD PREMIER: the inner-wrapper is 100% home-compostable… use it in your garden’s compost and this ‘waste’ becomes food for your plants!

In Process of Fair Trade Certification

The ingredients in Ananda Chocolate are Fair Trade-certified. However, no Fair trade logo is used yet, as the inspection by FLO-Cert of the chocolate factory in Ecuador is pending. The FT label will most likely be applied in 2010.

Ananda Chocolate comes in 5 flavors:

77% dark (Pure Extase)
70% dark with bits of dried banana (Blissful Banana)
70% dark with bits of coffee and mint (Mentally Mint)
70% dark with coffee beans (Coffee Break)
70% dark, sweetened with banana fructose - NO SUGAR ADDED (Bye Bye Sugar!)

Available September 2009.

More info:

Pre-orders:

Amigos International at Biofach 2009 a succes!

Amigos International — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:30:54 +0000

Amigos International had a fantastic time at the Biofach 2009 in Germany. The IFOAM café served our Escoffee, people ate record amounts of Organic Meltdown chocolate at our booth, Salsa was playing for a good atmosphere, and many new distributors showed interest in carrying the organic Amigos products. Concrete sales were also done, increasing our outlets in mostly Germany. Our new colleague from Finland Tuomo Saari wore the Amigos hat proudly and managed to make many good business contacts for Scandinavia, where Amigos is about to enter the market. We also had the pleasure of having Matt of Organic Meltdown in the stand for a few days, explaining in detail to visitors how OM saves trees.

Amigos at the Horecava trade show Amsterdam

Amigos International — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:08:31 +0000

Amigos participated at the Horecava trade show in Amsterdam, January 12-15. From left to right: General Director Jeroen Kruft; Marketing & Sales, team members Varisha Ramnarain, Daniel Schut and Jordi Strormann; Director Marketing & Sales Bastiaan Bais

Coffee Pulping Project

Amigos International — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:56:05 +0000

Pulping Machines benefit more Specialty Coffee. Every year, Amigos finances much needed coffee pulping machines for the farmers of Olmedo and Chaguarpamba, province of Loja, Ecuador. This machine rids the coffee bean of its red (or yellow) cherry. This ‘wet-method’ of the ‘washed’ coffee results in a superior quality to ‘sun-dried’ coffee, which is dried with its cherry in tact, to be pulped later, when dry. Pulping, fermenting and washing coffee are important characteristics of a ‘Specialty Coffee’. The superior washed ‘parchment coffee’ fetches a higher price for the farmer, paid by Escoffee (about 20% higher than the minimum established Fair trade price – for more detailed info please contact us). The pulping machines come from Colombia, and for a cherished Penagos machine a farming family pays $350. This is under the cost price of $392 (including transport) but this small subsidy of Amigos International makes the machine more affordable. The farmer pays back the machine in 2 years time, against 0% interest. This money will then be reinvested in more machines, because there are every year more and more families who realize the advantage of washed coffee, with its added value. The proud farmers are also happy that more high-value processed coffee is making the villages more famous in Ecuador, and in the World of Specialty Coffees of Origin. Left: Elizabeth Ríos from Olmedo, on of the proud owners of a pulping machine. Right: Manuel Sánchez (center) of Escoffee and Jerome Kruft of Amigos International provide another machine to a farmer in Chaguarpamba.