Our family business has a very clear goal – to work with the very best quality suppliers at home and overseas.
We believe that quality and trading fairly go hand in hand. It’s only by forging strong trading relationships with the growers, and ensuring that we pay them premium prices, that we can ensure a continued supply of the best quality teas and coffees.
Our close ties with tea and coffee growing communities across Africa, Asia, Central and South America has been the driving force behind the creation of a robust Sustainable Sourcing Programme within our company. We balance our emotional, instinctive, ‘gut feel’ for great quality with realistic, practical measures which help ensure that our tea and coffee is being grown responsibly, and that we buy from well-run tea gardens and coffee farms.
What is our Sustainable Sourcing Programme?
In essence it’s quite simple –
- We build direct, long-term relationships with growers.
- We always pay an excellent price for our quality teas and coffees.
- Our buyers are qualified social auditors and work to the Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code. When working independently and with other auditing schemes such as the Ethical Tea Partnerships, these audits help us assess and understand how our prices are helping improve living and working conditions on tea and coffee estates.
In 2007 we were proud to receive 2 prestigious awards which recognised the work that we do to ensure our business trades fairly and ethically with its suppliers – The Queen’s Award for Enterprise for Sustainable Development and Business in the Community Award ‘Example of Excellence’
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