Ownership of Butonde Coffee Limited?

Butonde Coffee (The Brand) which is produced by Butonde Coffee Limited a registered entity owned by the three Small Producer Organisations (SPO’s) under the Growing Resilient Agricultural Enterprises (GREAN) project. The 3 Small Producer Organisations owning Butonde have equal shares of up to 33.33%. being a company owned by farmers. Butonde coffee is a blend which is Fairtrade certified and it possesses a Fairtrade Mark on its packet. It came up as way of supporting farmers to add more value to their coffee and then sell it to Fairtrade markets and other customers on local, regional and international markets.

The SPOs currently have a sales and marketing team in place, who look at quality, negotiate contracts, ensure delivery, processing and so on. This team will be trained on additional services, such as negotiating shelf space terms with supermarkets, executing the marketing plan. During the product development phase there will be additional jobs created particularly temporary work during the product activation period. There could therefore be temporary work for 40-80 people. As the product establishes it is anticipated that more gainful employment opportunities will increase over time.

How we started

The Board members and top Management from the 3 SPO’s sat and discussed on how they will come up with a product. They started with an idea of registering an entity to manage the brand, which they called Butonde Coffee Limited and the product name called Butonde Coffee. The name Butonde in the central of Uganda means nature and this name was derived from the agenda of the project to enhance the spirit of environment protection and preserving nature while growing coffee.