Volcafe’s journey with Meridia Verify®
Volcafe is a leading green coffee trading company with a rich history dating back to 1851. Operating in over 25 countries, including 15 major coffee-producing nations, Volcafe works across the green coffee value chains, forging strong relationships with coffee producers and bringing a vast range of Arabica and Robusta coffees to roasters all over the planet. The company is dedicated to building a thriving, sustainable coffee business for all.
In its preparations to ensure compliance with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), Volcafe’s priority was ensuring that this new requirement would be transparent for the coffee farmers and as smooth as possible for its field team.
Streamlining and integrating the data collection process with the existing sustainability certifications was critical for the green coffee trading company.
Data quality
Existing farm-level data lacked sufficient automation for verification, making it error-prone and resource-intensive to manage.
Systems integration
Different origin offices used varied systems, scattering data and making harmonisation challenging.
Manual processes
Preparing datasets for compliance assessments involved laborious manual checks and lacked scalable automation.
At Volcafe, we have been collecting geolocations of coffee farms part of the Volcafe Way farmer support programme for many years. Those data were securely stored and not exportable (for privacy reasons). But with EUDR, we needed a solution that generates GeoJSONs or supports APIs – while not compromising the privacy of those data. The structure of our system made it very complex, especially with thousands of farms across multiple countries.
Volcafe chose and implemented Meridia Verify®, a comprehensive data verification and compliance tool, to streamline its processes and ensure alignment with EUDR.
The key features of Verify that addressed Volcafe’s needs included:
Advanced data quality checks
Automated tests to detect data inaccuracy like overlaps, inconsistent IDs, or missing attributes.
Detailed reporting
Farm-by-farm risk assessments, enabling granular understanding and actionable insights.
User-friendly portal
A centralised system for uploading, processing, and reviewing datasets.
Meridia supported Volcafe through a tailored onboarding process, including training and pilot programmes, which allowed the team to efficiently process and clean the data of thousands of coffee farm plots.
Enhanced data quality
“We now have a clear summary of the issues in our systems, preventing involuntary mistakes and significantly improving data quality.”
Efficiency gains
“Previously, assessing data quality for thousands of farms was error-prone and time-consuming. With Meridia, we upload the data and get results within minutes.”
Scalability
Verified over 80,000 farms across multiple countries, with plans to integrate APIs for further automation.
Meridia Verify’s comprehensive solution helps us address multiple challenges — from deforestation risks to data quality — while preparing for evolving compliance requirements.