Roberto Alonso Vega Alfaro, Vice President for Global Coffee Agronomy, R&D and Sustainability, SCTC

Starbucks Coffee Trading Company (SCTC) has appointed Roberto Alonso Vega Alfaro as Vice President for Global Coffee Agronomy, R&D and Sustainability and promoted Elliot Bentzen to Director of Trading & Traffic. 
 

Vega joins Starbucks’ coffee trading division from Swiss agrichemical company Syngenta, where he served as Global Head of Value Chain since November 2020. 

In his new role, Vega will be responsible for coffee agronomy research, development and sustainability globally and will oversee SCTC’s network of 10 farmer support centres across the world. 

He will also oversee Starbucks’ Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices, a set of ethical sourcing standards launched by Starbucks in 2004 to measure coffee farms against select economic, social and environmental criteria, and assume oversight of Starbucks’ Hacienda Alsacia Costa Rican coffee farm.   

Meanwhile, in his new role as Director of Trading & Traffic Bentzen will manage Starbucks’ global coffee and cocoa sourcing activities. 

Bentzen, who joined SCTC as a green coffee trader in 2015, will be responsible for the delivery of green coffee and cocoa across the Seattle-based coffee chain’s growing international network of outlets. 

Starbucks currently operates more than 36,600 stores across 86 global markets. It buys approximately 3% of the world’s annual coffee production, sourced from more than 400,000 farmers across 30 countries.