Gestern erreichten uns ein Neujahrsbrief der Bio-Rooibusch-Cooperative Wupperthal in Südafrika, wo wir unseren Rooibusch her beziehen, und mit der wir über die gemeinsame Initiative "Trust organic small farmers" freundschaftlich verbunden sind. Wir stellen hier den Brief im Original auf englisch in den Blog. Erklärend dazu: es gab eine Menge Streit in der "alten" Cooperative, der zur Spaltung geführt hat - vor allem Ex-Mitglieder, die nur noch Landbesitzer waren, aber nicht mehr dort gelebt und gearbeitet hatten, hatten sich von der ursprünlichen Idee entfernt (daher jetzt das 'Original' im Namen). Bitte lesen Sie zur weiteren Information auch unser Lieferantenportrait Wupperthal-Rooibusch.
Im Frühjahr werden wir die Wupperthaler sowie das Dorf Erikaville besuchen, und darüber natürlich wieder einen Reisebericht schreiben.

Wupperthal, 31 December 2009

Dear Friends of Wupperthal Rooibos Original Coop

We from Wupperthal wish you all the best for the New Year 2010.

We would like to inform you about the latest developments and progress in our Coop.

Our group of 83 farmers has been registered in June 2009 as "Wupperthal Original Rooibos Agricultural Primary Co-operative Limited" which we refer to from now as Wupperthal Original Rooibos Coop.

We successfully received also in June 2009 the organic certification via LACON for EC and NOP.

We also were able to go through the lengthy application process of FLO certification and had on 15 December a very successful inspection and are awaiting final certification. The new FLO ID is 22605.

The Wupperthal Original Coop is also member of the "Trust Organic Small Farmers" and the International Alliance for ECO- ETHICAL TRADE AND GOODS

During the past year we received land from the church to build our new tea court. All farmers were very encouraged to help building and last week we casted the concrete bed. We are looking forward to using this new tea court by the end of January.

Via Frontier's (USA-Importeur) Well Earth program we were able to purchase new machines for the primary processing of the rooibos tea.

For the secondary processing we have found a reliable partner in Kings Products where our tea also gets sterilized and packed for export and the local market. At Kings Products we can produce various grades, blends and flavoured rooibos tea products and we are in the process of building up a BEE partnership with Kings Products.

Our export gets done by our partners at TopQualiTea - South Africa (Pty) Ltd. The bureaucracy involved with each shipment is something we decided should be handled in Cape Town where fast and reliable acting is required.

We are sorry we haven't been more informative in the past few months but re-building our team, production, facilities and getting all the registrations and certifications sorted kept us quite busy.

For now we wish you a prosperous 2010

For the Coop

Barend Salomo

(chairman of the coop)

Der Wupperthal-Bio-Rooibusch ist Grundlage unserer Bio-Rooibusch-Tees:
Rooibusch rot pur, Rooibusch Lemon Myrtle, Rooibusch Sanddorn, Rooibusch Citron, Rooibusch Rose, Rooibusch Vanille, Rooibusch SchokoZimt, Rooibusch Gewürz, Rooibusch Chai.