“I’m very critical of the specialty coffee industry” – Caravela Coffee CEO, Alejandro Cadena

Sustainability, transparency and ethics are often viewed in opposition to profitability. Since 2000, Caravela Coffee has proved that incorporating these values into its DNA isn’t just the right thing to do – it makes plain business sense. Tobias Pearce spoke with the trailblazing specialty coffee exporter’s co-founder and CEO, Alejandro Cadena, to find out how far the industry has come – and why hard-won progress is under threat

Transparency, traceability, sustainability and ethics are central pillars of the specialty coffee movement. As these once niche values have entered the mainstream, the global coffee industry has become increasingly quality-driven and equitable for many of the farmers who produce our daily cup.

This progress is cause for celebration, but according to the CEO of one of the world’s most respected specialty coffee exporters, the fight for a fairer, more prosperous coffee industry is far from over.

Over the last 25 years, Caravela Coffee has insisted that a prosperous supply chain isn’t just an ESG exercise – it makes the soundest business sense. “Trust is a foundation of any business relationship,” says Caravela co-founder and CEO, Alejandro Cadena.

“Volatility is the name of the game, has been for the last 15 years, and will continue to be”

As a proponent of sustainable and ethical business practices since 2000, Caravela has earned a reputation for painstaking attention to detail when it comes to coffee quality, supply chain transparency and ensuring that value is fairly distributed.

Cadena’s career began on a different path as a boutique investment banker and M&A specialist working for Schroeders and Citigroup in Colombia, London and New York. But it was during the late 1990s that he saw an opportunity to import a product that had shown consistently strong demand in Europe – coffee.

The coffee industry wasn’t a complete unknown for Cadena, whose father worked for the National Coffee Growers Association in Colombia. “I always joke that I got my education thanks to Colombian coffee farmers. I am a product of their hard work,” he says.