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Champion Sustainability with Fairtrade

Fairtrade enables businesses to create sustainable and transparent supply chains, which empower the producer communities and protect the environment.

Why choose to partner with Fairtrade?

Are you looking at responsible sourcing? Are your buyers and customers asking for greater transparency and sustainability? Do you want to measure and communicate the impact of your sourcing on the producers and the environment? Take a look below to see how your business can benefit from working with Fairtrade while empowering farming communities in your supply chain.

Widespread global recognition and awareness

The Fairtrade Mark is one of the most recognised ethical labels, visible on over 30,000 products across 125 countries. Awareness of Fairtrade is rapidly growing across cities in India. With many new brands and products being launched in India with the Fairtrade Mark, the consumer awareness of the concept is expected to increase significantly in the coming years.

Sustainable sourcing

Leading businesses across the world and as well as many businesses in India are choosing to partner with Fairtrade to fulfil their sustainable sourcing commitments for raw material ranging from Cocoa, to Sugar from Peanuts to Cotton and hundreds of other Fairtrade certified products.

Develop an edge in the market

By using the Fairtrade Mark, businesses get to differentiate themselves in the market. Especially in India, it helps them develop a position as a champion of sustainability while pioneering in their commitment towards the farmers and the environment. Fairtrade enables these businesses to create a positive impact, empower rural communities, and protect the environment.

Improved supply chains

The Fairtrade model also strengthens supply chains and through the Fairtrade Premium enables investments in quality, productivity and particularly addresses the socio-economic needs of the producers. This helps in building stronger relationships between stakeholders.

Building supply chain transparency and robustness

Fairtrade Standards and Certification serve as an independent mechanism which enables risk management of the supply chains, covering economic, environmental, human rights and other social factors. Fairtrade certification builds transparency and visibility amidst partners in the supply chain, helping businesses become champions of sustainability.

Empowering producer communities

Fairtrade actively helps farming become an attractive and feasible option for newer generations. It also enables businesses, their commercial partners and consumers to gain valuable insights into the advantages that a business brings to farmer communities within one’s supply chain.

Authentic impact based brand building

Showing the impact that you make through your Fairtrade commitment means customers are proud to choose your Fairtrade products. We can provide you farmer stories, statistics and marketing materials to help you show impact and tell your Fairtrade story.

Future-proof your supply chain

Tackle the issues in your supply chain with Fairtrade and the Fairtrade Standards. Your quality produce will be from a robust and resilient supply chain. Fairly paid, more secure and highly trained farmers are better equipped to deal with global challenges, from climate change to human rights abuses. One third of all Fairtrade Standards are about keeping the planet healthy. Fairtrade farmers not only protect our environment, but they are also trained to withstand the changes that the climate crisis is bringing.

Source flexibly on Fairtrade terms

Source flexibly on Fairtrade terms

With Fairtade, businesses get the option of availing two models of sourcing, the Core Fairtrade Mark and the Fairtrade Sourced Ingredient Mark. The two models offer flexibility to business and give shoppers more choices in supporting producer communities. In both the models, farmers and workers receive the same great benefits; the protection of the Fairtrade Minimum Price and the Fairtrade Premium to choose how to invest in their communities.

The Core
Fairtrade Mark

Known around the world, the Core Fairtrade Mark is recognised by close to 15 percent of SEC A1 & A2 consumers in urban India. Roughly nine in ten urban consumers in India say that seeing the Fairtrade Mark on a product has a positive impact on their perception of the brand.

To get this Fairtrade Mark, every ingredient in a product that can be Fairtrade, must be sourced as Fairtrade. For example, for a chocolate bar, one would source cocoa, vanilla and sugar as Fairtrade.

The Fairtrade Sourced
Ingredient Mark

In the Fairtrade Sourced Ingredient (FSI) model, instead of focusing on all the ingredients, a business can commit to sourcing one or more specific commodities and use them across a product range or even in their whole business.In this way brands can agree to the usage of sustainably sourced ingredients in higher quantities and address the problems that are important to their business.

A brand can still avail the advantage of higher customer awareness and trust metrics that comes along with the use of the FSI Mark on their product. The Mark is a promise of transparency towards the customers by highlighting which ingredients are Fairtrade Certified. Alternatively, businesses can also avail corporate communication options to convey their responsible sourcing commitment.

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Sustainable
supply chains

Sourcing on Fairtrade terms means your supply chain will be meeting the Fairtrade Standards, and that the farmers and workers who grow your ingredients will have been paid at least the Fairtrade Minimum Price and Premium. It will also mean that everyone in your supply chain is Fairtrade certified if they need to be, verifying that the Fairtrade volumes are accounted for throughout the supply chain. This is all managed by FLOCERT, the independent auditing and certification body. This means that you can rest assured that you have a deeper understanding of the challenges and risks within your supply chain, as well as knowing that any issues will be dealt with quickly and responsibly.

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How can businesses get involved?

All businesses interested in buying or selling Fairtrade products should contact Fairtrade India on info@fairtradeindia.org. We can assess your specific situation and guide you accordingly in becoming certified, obtaining a licence, making Fairtrade market linkages and/or creating communications material. Here is a broad overview of the steps you’ll need to take:

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If you are a Manufacturer or Trader looking to supply Fairtrade Certified products, you must apply for certification (http://www.flo-cert.net/). It is important that you source your raw material from a Fairtrade Certified supply chain. Before applying for the certification you should make sure that you deal in products for which Fairtrade International has a product standard; and that you are willing to respect the relevant Standard (www.fairtrade.net/standards.html).

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If you are a Brand Owner, you must purchase from Fairtrade Certified producer groups or traders. Products must be certified along the entire supply chain from farmer organisation to final consumer packaging of the labelled product. So, if you are the manufacturer of the labelled product you will also need certification (http://www.flo-cert.net/). All brand owners must also become a licensee to use the FAIRTRADE Mark on their products. To do this, prospective licensees submit an application to the Fairtrade Organisation in their country or Fairtrade International, sign a licence contract, regularly report sales of Fairtrade products and pay licence fees on these sales.

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If you are a Retailer or Distributor of Fairtrade labelled and licensed products from other companies, you can sell these products without registering with Fairtrade International or a National Fairtrade Organisation. If you want to sell your own branded products with the FAIRTRADE Mark, you must follow the requirements for a Brand Owner as stated above.

Frequently Asked Questions

FMCG food and fashion sectors are some of the largest buyers of agricultural products. The socio-economic, environmental and human rights impact of these businesses start from the conditions on the farms where their raw materials are grown. Factors that create challenges in the agricultural sector tend to have ripple effects for the food and fashion sectors also. Furthermore, research shows that even Indian consumers are increasingly caring about the environmental and social impact of their choices and admire businesses that lead in being ethical and sustainable. In India, the agricultural sector has been facing increasing risks due to factors like climate change and strain on natural resources like water. This situation has been further exacerbated by mounting economic pressures on the livelihood of the small holder farmers. Sustainable sourcing decisions can directly impact these issues and enable farmers to earn a sustainable livelihood. Businesses in India have the opportunity to become sustainability pioneers while also connecting with the consumers’ latent demand for more sustainable products.

Compared with what? the conventional market? It's not about costing more but about the price that a fair and sustainable product should cost. It's better to ask yourself the question, "Why are other products so cheap?". The cost implications might depend on the products and volumes that you source on Fairtrade terms. Through Fairtrade Certification you would have full visibility of your supply chain. Your business would get better value, as it would not only be procuring a sustainable product but also creating greater social and environmental impact. The Fairtrade India team will figure out the best supply chains and commercial options for these procurement decisions and will be happy to assist you through this process

The Fairtrade system turns supply chains into drivers of poverty alleviation and sustainable development by demanding fair prices in combination with strict environmental and social criteria in food and fashion supply chains.

Fairtrade is not a guarantee of quality, but you would have visibility of your entire supply chain and therefore quality and production parameters would be easier to track, and standards would be easier to meet.

Yes, sure no problem. We can try and work out how Fairtrade sourcing can be incorporated by them. Connect us to your suppliers on an email and we will explain the procedure to them and figure out the possibilities based on where they are currently sourcing from.

Contact the representative from Fairtrade India or mail us on info@fairtradeindia.org. We work with hundreds of producer organisations and businesses across India and based on your requirements could connect you with suitable partners. We could also work with you to create new Fairtrade certified supply chains. Fairtrade certified food and fashion products are increasingly becoming available in a lot of offline outlets all over the country and are available online too. Reach out to us for more details.

No, Fairtrade India is a not for profit organisation. A project that aims to promote responsible consumption and production (UN SDG12) in the country and is working on a program funded by the European Union SWITCH-Asia project. While we work with businesses to facilitate the forward and backward market linkages, the products are always sourced through the vendors or distributors directly.