A hugely proud day for us at Union, we are excited to announce that we have, once again, received The Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development.
The Queen’s Awards recognise outstanding achievement in the fields of international trade, innovation and sustainable development, and have been the highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by Royal Warrant in 1965. As in 2017, our award in 2022 comes as recognition for our pioneering coffee sourcing policy, Union Direct Trade.
Our co-founders, Steven and Jeremy, created Union to challenge a broken and unjust commodity coffee system. Union Direct Trade was set up to not only focus on paying a fair price but to work in partnership, building long-term sustainable livelihoods. We remain committed to developing this sourcing initiative, maintaining direct relationships and ensuring transparency and traceability throughout the supply chain.
Today, we continue to hand-roast fresh coffee for customers to enjoy both at home and in cafes and restaurants across the country. By scaling speciality coffee, we’ve increased our positive impact and reach to our producer partners. To put that into perspective, we source from 40 producer groups of mostly smallholder farmers, from 14 countries, representing 13,000 family farms and 65,000+ individuals.
From day one, our Union has been a mission-driven business with the goal to create sustainable livelihoods for coffee producers whilst spreading the joy of speciality coffee to the world. It is an incredible honour to be recognised with this award.
“We are so proud to receive the Queen’s Award for Sustainable Development for the second time. Our whole business strategy focuses on the health and well-being of people and planet, building stronger communities and future-proofing our supply of speciality coffee. It is with thanks to everyone in our union, from coffee farmers to everyone drinking Union coffee at home, that makes this vision a reality.”
Steven Macatonia
Union Co-Founder
Jeremy meeting Queen Elizabeth, July 2017
