In our company, TEEKANNE, it is important to maintain direct and long-term partnerships with our suppliers. This is why, in case of raw materials which are grown, we conclude agreements with our suppliers locally and offer them investment and planning safety. Part of our obligation is also support in the area of professional farm management, which we offer to our partners through our own agricultural engineers.
This model is attractive for us, because quality can be inspected and optimized on site.
For many years, our policy has been to purchase most of our raw materials from suppliers that grow plants for us on a contract basis and/or are our long-standing partners. At present, as much as approx. 65 % of our raw materials come from such supplier relationships.
Our goal is to achieve 80 % by 2020.
Our goal: By 2020, 80 % of our raw materials will be purchased from suppliers on the basis of long-term partnerships.
The agricultural engineers of TEEKANNE, who travel from Germany to growing areas all over the world, have a long experience both in practical agriculture and in consulting and project management. They worked for many years in aid and development projects, for example in Asia and Africa. The main goal was support of farmers running small farms in the production and sale of agricultural products.
Besides the agricultural engineers based in Germany, TEEKANNE also employs a Chinese tea expert who is permanently based in China (a very important country of origin of our products) and who has the best qualifications for supervising Chinese suppliers, owing to her degree in tea science in China.