To ensure EUDR compliance, Neumann Kaffee Gruppe partners with Satelligence for a pilot to implement satellite-based deforestation monitoring tools across its coffee supply chains in Honduras and Uganda.
With the EU Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR) coming into force at the end of 2024, Neumann Kaffee Gruppe (NKG) wanted to implement satellite monitoring of deforestation throughout its supply chains to ensure that its exports to the EU meet the regulation’s deforestation-free requirement. However, there is no publicly available tool for the accurate detection of deforestation. Results vary widely and there are often many false positives. For example, the renovation of coffee trees or even intensive pruning can trigger deforestation alerts. This results in high costs for verifying correctness. Satelligence has the experience to monitor this more accurately for tropical commodities, including agroforestry or shaded coffee systems, which are often the case for smallholder coffee farmers. There is a risk that smallholders and agroforestry systems will be excluded from supply chains due to a lack of good monitoring of deforestation, when in fact they offer carbon sequestration and biodiversity benefits that are in line with the objectives of the regulation.
Satelligence will provide NKG with near real-time observation of forest loss in and around farms that supply coffee to NKG exporters. The real-time monitoring allows NKG to understand what is happening and take mitigation measures long before coffee would be grown, harvested and thus sold into the EU from the deforested land areas, which means a much lower risk of issues upon import into the EU for NKG and its customers.
“Satelligence’s expertise in adjusting remote sensing algorithms and map layers has already given our operations in Honduras and Uganda more accurate results without doing extensive surveys on the ground”, says Carolin Ehrensperger, Head of Sustainable Business Unit, NKG.
The EU Deforestation-Free Regulation prohibits the placing on, making available on and export from the EU market of a range of products if they are not deforestation-free by December 31, 2020. At the heart of the regulation are due diligence obligations for EU-based companies, which require them to collect information, including geolocation of all plots of lands on which the product was produced, assess the risk, and mitigate the risk. After the entry into force of the key provisions on December 30, 2024, no coffee will be able to enter the EU without a Due Diligence Statement including geolocation data.
