The transportation company Gebrüder Weiss announced August 18 that it was joining forces with the Swiss coffee maker Atinkana in an attempt to create a more environmentally friendly way to distribute coffee beans. The two sides will also work to restore some of the virgin forests in Colombia and make the country’s soil more fertile.
Atinkana will use methods of transportation that have limited carbon emissions to get its coffee to Europe. First, it will transport the beans to Amsterdam on sailing ships, move them to Antwerp, Belgium via trucks and send them to Basel, Switzerland by rail. From there, Gebrüder Weiss delivers the beans to a roasting plant by using hydrogen-powered trucks.
For every kilo of coffee sold by Atinkana, the company plants two trees in Colombia.
“Thanks to the cooperation with our innovative logistics partners Fairtransport and Gebrüder Weiss, we are able to cover 98% of the route from Colombia to Switzerland by sustainable means of transport,” said Andre Conte, logistics manager at Atinkana. “This makes our coffee almost as sustainable as a regional product in Europe.”
Gebrüder Weiss said it takes about ten weeks to get coffee to Europe via sailing ships, which means the company can transport about 14 tons of coffee to Switzerland annually.
