MEDIA RELEASE 23 NOVEMBER 2006

Monash and RMIT Universities are buying ethically-produced Fair Trade coffee for staff use within their campuses. Both universities are taking the lead in Australia by adopting the hugely successful international trend to support products that are Fair Trade certified.
Fair Trade, an alternative approach to international trade, seeks to ensure that small-scale farmers and plantation workers receive a fair price for their crops and labour and work under safe conditions. Fair Trade is a hugely successful international trend worth over a billion dollars and growing.  It’s well-established in the UK and Europe but in its infancy in Australia.

In support of this movement, Corporate Express has recently added República® Fair Trade Coffee to its range to give business customers an ethical choice in purchasing. This makes them the first office supply company in Australia to actively offer Fair Trade Coffee to their customers.

República® coffee is the brainchild of Jacqueline Arias, a Colombian-born Australian who believes passionately in helping her birthplace develop and in creating great tasting ethical coffee.

“I visited Colombia on holidays a few years ago and was appalled that you couldn’t buy a decent cup of coffee even though Colombia is renowned for growing some of the best. When I returned to Australia I started researching the market and that’s when I first heard about Fair Trade,” said Arias.

“I thought it was crazy that Colombian farmers grow some of the world’s best coffee beans but most of them drink instant coffee that they buy on supermarket shelves. The local people have no concept of the value that other countries place on coffee.

“When I heard about the Fair Trade movement it just made a great deal of sense to me. In the UK you can buy about 1,500 different Fair Trade products and the products are available everywhere – it’s mainstream! In fact if you travel on Virgin Trains you’re served Fair Trade Coffee only and if you go to McDonalds in Switzerland that’s all you get!  Even Tescos the UK’s largest grocery chain has converted all its housebrand coffee to Fair Trade, that’s 18% of the coffee consumed in the UK!

“From a personal perspective my involvement with República® Coffee has given me the opportunity to reconnect with Colombia, maintain my ethical stance and promote the Fair Trade movement,” she said.

Fair Trade seeks to give producers in developing countries more control by paying them a fair price, helping them to develop the skills they need to develop their businesses and developing long term trading relationships.

 “It’s crazy that Italians are known for their coffee but they don’t actually grow it. They only roast it. My mission is to make Fair Trade as big in Australia as the rest of the world, by offering consumers a choice, that is good tasting ethical coffee. And ultimately Third World coffee farmers including Colombians will benefit.” She said.

República® Coffee can be purchased online using NetXpress at https://netxpress.biz/