While the ongoing coronavirus crisis has helped thrust sustainability to the top of the agenda, for Dubai-based Coffee Planet it has been an integral part of its ethos for more than a decade.
The home-grown coffee roaster has walked the walk when it comes to sustainable initiatives for some time as a longstanding and still only UTZ certified roaster in the UAE.
And most recently Coffee Planet launched The Plant a Tree Project, as part of the Eden Reforestation Project, where the company will plant a tree for every purchase of their new Nespresso compatible, biodegradable capsules.
CEO Robert Jones told Arabian Business they are hoping to plant around 150,000 trees by the end of this year.
He said: “It’s amazing for us. In the grand scheme of things it’s a relatively small contribution, but it is a contribution nonetheless and it is part of the initiatives that we are embracing and engaging with as a business.”
The Eden Reforestation Project is a non-profit organisation with a mission to reduce extreme poverty and restore healthy forests by employing local communities to help plant millions of trees each year.
For the last ten years, Coffee Planet has also been fully certified by UTZ, a program for sustainable farming of coffee, tea, cocoa and hazelnuts, which is part of the Rainforest Alliance.
“I think people are generally more aware now of sustainability initiatives and obviously the movement towards being more earth friendly,” said Jones.
“But this isn’t about us jumping on a sustainable bandwagon and shouting about doing various things. This is just a continuation of a theme and a message and just continuing to add more initiatives and it’s interesting now that the market is coming to us and asking if they can do things with us or asking for advice on recycling or upcycling.”
Robert Jones, CEO of Coffee Planet
It comes as the company strives to return to pre-Covid levels and the kind of results witnessed in 2019, when Coffee Planet recorded a 25 percent growth. Despite the difficulties associated with the ‘Year of Covid’, Jones revealed the company retained 99 percent of customers grew its customer base by around 15 percent.
“Getting back to 2019 levels I think would be tremendous for us as a business and a brand,” he said.
And he admitted they were looking forward to a “very exciting year” ahead, with some “really exciting” projects and contracts coming through.
This includes the continued 15-year partnership with ENOC, which will see Coffee Planet rolled out in 200 new locations across the UAE. He said they had also recently concluded a couple of franchise signings as well as regional deals with unnamed “major hotel groups”.
And for the first time, the company will be opening cafes in the country. Jones said: “That’s very exciting for us because it gives people a tangible space in which to enjoy the brand and it’s something that people have been asking us for many years.
“Although the world seems to live in the digital space now, there’s still a tremendous appetite for bricks-and-mortar coffee retail.”
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