Westrock revs effort to boost sustainability
Coffee company set to track beans from farms to factory
The ever-growing Little-Rock based coffee and tea producer Westrock Coffee Co. is expanding programs to trace coffee beans from farm to factory, ramping up its sustainability efforts.
Customers who walk into some convenience stores, quick service restaurants, grocery stores or hotels may be grabbing a cup of Joe brewed with Westrock Coffee Co. coffee beans without even knowing it.
Westrock Coffee, founded by Arkansas native father and son duo Joe and Scott Ford, is a private label manufacturer of coffee and tea products, and a food service manufacturer supplying large companies.
“We’re the brand behind the brand,” said Matt Smith, executive vice president for global supply chain and sustainability efforts at Westrock Coffee.
Responsible sourcing of raw materials is a major component of the business model, according to the company, and Westrock Coffee has been working on supply chain development pertaining to coffee since the company’s inception in 2009.
Westrock purchases coffee beans from more than 20 countries, primarily in Africa and Latin America, as well as a few Asian countries like Indonesia, Smith said.
The viability of growing coffee beans sustainably or organically depends on farmers, auditing, markets and whether consumers are willing to pay a higher premium, said Brooke Cantrell, vice president of sustainability efforts at Westrock Coffee.
Smith said market demand for such products has grown enormously in the last 30 years and some of Westrock Coffee’s internal programs require farmers to adhere to banned pesticides and fertilizer lists but the company’s focus is foremost on sustainability.
“The goal is not to compete with other certifications in this space, the goal is to get non-traceable commodity coffee moved into something that is more transparent, more ethical and more responsible,” Smith said.
Coffee supply chains have evolved and farmers today are more educated and have access to data and real-time pricing information, Smith said.
Smith said the company’s travels have evolved to focus more on relationship management.
“We want to understand how is climate change affecting you, what are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint via more responsible use of agrochemicals or fertilizers, how can we help you, where do you have knowledge gaps we can fill through
trainings or connecting you with another party we know of that works in this space? By and large, it’s no longer about traveling to origin to find coffees or negotiate the purchase of coffees.”
Cantrell said it’s no longer about sitting across a table and negotiating pricing with farmers.
“It’s about sitting across a table and asking what services do you need on your farm to be economically and environmentally sustainable, that’s really how we’ve learned to build sustainable supply chains,” Cantrell said.
Westrock purchases coffee beans from aggregators who purchase from farmers and the company expects aggregators to ensure responsible sourcing for the materials, to provide services like cost of production surveys and to report information collected from farmers back to the company, Cantrell said.
Providing training about more sustainable farming practices to partner farmers helps create stronger, more stable supply chains, Smith said.
“More production for us means our future is secure and it also means better yields for them and better pricing,” Smith said.
In 2022, Westrock Coffee worked with 1.5 million farmers across 35 countries; 200 million pounds of green coffee and tea were sold globally; 35 million pounds of product was sourced via digitally traceable coffee supply chains in seven countries, according to the company.
“We’re buying from the same people year in and year out because they are in business, profitable and treat us as a valued partner as well, so that’s where sourcing and sustainability really intersect,” Smith said.
“That’s why at Westrock, sustainability is part of our supply chain team and not sales and marketing.”
More than 20 million cups of coffee are provided by Westrock daily and the company operates more than 100,000 customer storefronts in 53 countries; the company employs more than 1,250 staff in 10 countries and operates 9 global production and packaging facilities, according to a 2022 company sustainability report.
At Westrock Coffee, 69% of coffee and tea was responsibly sourced and digitally traceable to farmers in 2022, which is up 10% from the year prior, the report said.
The company started its Farmer Direct Verified program to trace physical coffee and sales transactions digitally from farmers to suppliers in the supply chain through to the finished product in 2020.
Westrock reported 53,283 digitally traceable farmer transactions last year, the report stated.
“The magic is not in the technology … the magic is in taking a really disjointed supply chain and creating a more vertically integrated approach … that allows us access to the farmers who provide us coffee,” Smith said.
“It’s knowing where they are, how they are producing our coffee and what they’re getting paid,” Smith said.
The company added a new service to the Farmer Direct Verified program last year, adding staff to visit partner farms in Rwanda and Colombia to collect data such as costs of production, environmental stewardship information and social practices on farms, per the report.
In 2021, the company committed to sourcing 100% of materials responsibly by 2025.
Westrock committed to starting supplier audits in 2023 to ensure supply chain compliance with the company’s sourcing goals, according to the report.
“Our business is growing based on being able to sell this at a cost-competitive rate, so we’ve been successful in growing our customer base on the sustainable work that we do,” Smith said.
“Not every customer of ours values sustainability in the same way, so we have to have a catalog or a cafeteria menu of options for them and some are willing to pay for the top tier regenerative [agriculture] filet mignon, not everyone is, but we don’t want to leave those farmers behind either.”
The company will increase its local footprint in the coming months.
A 524,000-square-foot Westrock Coffee facility is expected to open in Conway in 2024.
Westrock is retrofitting a former Kimberly-Clark building to perform coffee roasting, extracting and packaging into different formats, Smith said.
“A lot of the capacity that exists in the U.S. for that is only packaging,” Smith said.
Upon the facility’s completion, Westrock Coffee will employ 1,000 people in Central Arkansas and the facility will also utilize advanced robotics equipment for manufacturing and packaging beverage options like canned or bottled cold brew coffee, lattes, juice products, single-serve coffee cups and assorted teas, the company stated.
The new facility will also house a product development lab and U.S. Food and Drug Administration certified pilot plant where employees can create, test and produce new beverage products, according to the company.