What makes Intersection Traders different?
Intersection Traders approach to supply chains and impact is based in peer-reviewed science/research. We have designed our mechanisms to solve the ‘crowdy three’ – a term we use to describe known issues in supply chain programs acting as ‘ethical’ development initiatives. We measure our impact and seek to innovate to continually improve our impact and efficiency.
Intersection Traders arose out of partnership between Dr Daniel Gregg, a research economist working in rural development and agri-food supply chains, and Adam Marley, one of Australia’s leading coffee roasters and a coffee quality and coffee supply chain expert. Together, Daniel and Adam represent a unique combination of skills and interests that provide for huge innovation to support outcomes that go way beyond existing ‘ethical’ achievements in coffee initiatives while providing great coffee quality.
Intersection Traders is unique in a range of ways, namely:
We actually innovate in supply chain activities in order to make those function better to achieve ethical outcomes, quality improvements and efficiency improvements. We are the only speciality coffee program globally that uses research on supply chain organisation to build better supply chains. See or posts on ‘science, innovation and evidence’ here for an overview of our innovation activities.
Our coffee program originates from an emerging speciality coffee region, not an established one. This means we are contributing to generating new value outcomes for growers who previously did not access high-value markets. It also means you are getting unique coffee with a delicious, but neutral, flavour profile (see more on our coffee tasting notes here)
We work with regional and national organisations to transfer our knowledge and capability to the source region. This means we are not only improving income in the regions we work in but we are also seeking to build capability within those regions to operate this program independently of us in the future.
We are explicitly focused on smallholder dominated regions – this means we work in areas where many small producers supply coffee. This contrasts with the majority of speciality coffee worldwide that originates from a small number of estates. Our program, in contrast, is not only scalable but benefits more householders for each kilogram of coffee sold. Our current average ‘lot’ size is only 40 kilograms showing that our program truly supports smallholders in our target areas. See more on the underpinnings of our innovations to support inclusive development outcomes here.
We publish our research on how to develop supply chains to realise better ethics, better quality, and better efficiency. This research is highlighted throughout these posts but is largely summarised in our ‘published research’ post here. This means our program is both based on, and contributes to, the science of supply chains that do ‘better’ for the world, including providing higher quality coffee for less cost.
We operate everything from purchasing from smallholders, importation of green (raw) coffee beans, roasting and operation of a café in Adelaide (Australia). Few other operations cover as much ground as we do, relying instead on trusting that other suppliers are doing what they say they are doing. We have full oversight from the farm gate to your cup of coffee (or bag/tin of roasted beans) meaning you can have full trust in what we say about our coffee and our supply chain.
For more on how we are different see our overview of ‘pitfalls in ethical sourcing’ here.