news & stories

2024 marked our 20th year as a company - a milestone we’re truly proud of. It all started in 2004 when a group of friends set out to shake up the coffee world. Fast forward two decades, and our big little coffee roastery has grown, evolved, and taken new paths more than a few times. People have come, gone, and sometimes come back again. Yet here we are, 20 years later, still fuelled by our shared love for coffee, this incredible industry, and the belief that everyone deserves to drink better coffee.

My name is Marcos Croce and this is Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza in Mococa, Brazil. Since 2001, when my wife Silvia inherited this farm, we decided it would be wonderful to have a project that would deeply impact our lives – a project with meaning and purpose. We aimed to transform this farm into a model of sustainability; socially, environmentally, and economically. Our goal is to sow the seeds of sustainability within the individual, the family, and society at large. 

Today, we collaborate with over 80 farmers, both medium and small-scale, all embracing what we call the "Bob-o-link project". The Bob-o-link project is a community of farmers who are committed to care both for today and the future. It's about farming for today and farming for tomorrow.

Our work is dedicated to protecting springs, creating green corridors for wildlife, and really bring dirt back into soil. And to produce great products. We have coffee as our main production, but we also plant other cultures in the middle of the coffee.

So, what we have is a 100-year plan. Everybody is going to be in this party, one hundred years from now and you guys are invited. That means that every decision we make on this farm today is with that celebration in mind – whether we're planting trees, safeguarding water, or new buildings. Whatever we do, we are thinking one hundred years from now.

There are two things we wish to give this planet, and our home: legacy and longevity. We're here not just for today, but for one hundred years to come.

- Marcos Croce, co-founder of FAF coffees and the Bob-o-link Project

Today, Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza thrives under the leadership of Marcos and Silvias son, Felipe, while Marcos is dedicated to expanding the horizons through the export part of the business. FAF Coffees has evolved beyond its origins as a sustainable farm; it now encompasses a network of like-minded farmers, a hub for coffee research, and an export company delivering their coffee globally.

We at J&N made our first purchase from FAF Coffees in 2010, and their beans have consistently been cherished favourites in our assortment ever since. Annually, we procure approximately 38 tonnes of coffee from FAF. This quantity equates to two full containers, or to visualise, 640 bags of green coffee! Our selection spans various lots, which we use not only in our single origin series Farmers and Flavours, but also as key components in some of our signature filter and espresso blends.

We know that you care about how the coffee you drink is grown, processed, and sourced. We also know that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for the challenges faced by farms worldwide that produce that coffee. We believe that the best way to help farmers is to invest in them. Improvements to a supply chain do not happen overnight. They take time, dedication, and resources.

That is why we have partnered with Enveritas, an independent nonprofit organization, to assess sustainability issues in our supply chain.

Enveritas works to provide roasters, farmers, consumers, and other stakeholders with a deeper understanding of the most challenging issues facing today’s coffee producers. Enveritas offers roasters like us, who are committed to working toward solutions, an opportunity to help advance meaningful social, environmental, and economic change throughout their supply chains.

How It Works

Every year, they conduct tens of thousands of assessments on coffee farms and with farm workers in more than 25 countries around the world to measure conditions against their sustainability standards. Those standards include social, environmental, and economic issues, including topics like child labor, occupational health and safety, the use of pesticides, water and energy conservation, transparency in pricing, and access to finance. Importantly, the assessments are done at no charge to the farmers.

Enveritas doesn’t give individual farms a pass or fail grade. Instead, they aggregate the data to see the bigger picture. Using the data collected during the farm visits and applying statistical tools, they build scorecards that assess the risk of different sustainability issues for all farms in a particular geographic area.

In 2024, Enveritas assessed the traceability and sustainability of 1,420,975 kg of our coffee. They visited the specific farms we partner with as well as conducting statistically significant sampling of farms in our sourcing areas. This provides us with a detailed report that helps us better understand the challenges farmers face.

Read more about Enveritas here: www.enveritas.org and our view on sustainability here www.johanochnystrom.com/sustainability


   

It has very soon been 12 months since we welcomed 2023. A whole year. Time can pass so quickly! It does so when you're having fun they say, and we sure had fun! But from a broader perspective, there's much that is anything but fun. Conflicts rage, people suffer, the economy is strained, and the news feels gloomy when it comes to both our planet and the climate. In the midst of all this misery, it's important to continue to see what is delightful and good, like excellent coffee!

Johan & Nyström has had an eventful and exciting year. We were both happy and proud when we introduced our revamped product portfolio. Old in the sense of the same high-quality specialty coffee and new in terms of updated categorization, new design, and partially new names. The House, Flavours, Farmers, and Prime series make it easy to find the level of coffee that suits oneself and/or one's guests and gain an understanding of the differences within the narrow niche of specialty coffee.

As always, we have made several visits to the coffee origin, meaning we have visited our fantastic coffee producers. In a good business relationship, there is no "us vs. them," only shared goals, and here we dare to say that we go even further – they feel like our friends. Together, we make the coffee world better and make it possible for more people to enjoy coffee that is excellent in many aspects.

Dear Tea Society, our tea that has been with us for a long time and received a little extra love this year. Here too, we have reviewed the assortment to simplify and clarify. The path to a good cup of tea should be as simple as letting the tea bag steep for 2 minutes.

As we bid farewell to 2023 and welcome 2024, we look back on a year we are satisfied with, despite the challenges we have also faced due to the world we are a part of. We look forward to an exciting new year and welcome whatever it may bring us and what we can fill it with. And whether we are summing up or envisioning, there is a common denominator that is the most important of all: our customers and coffee and tea drinkers. Without you, there is no Johan & Nyström! Thanks to you, we have happy producers. Thanks to many good producers, we have better coffee production. Thanks to good coffee production... well, you get the idea.

So, a big THANK YOU! We look forward to a GREAT new coffee year with all of you!

Johan Moren, CEO of Johan & Nyström

THE CHRISTMAS GIFT

The Christmas gift this year, as usual, doesn't go to you but to a better coffee world. This year, we support a wonderful initiative by FAF Coffees in Brazil, which they've named "2050."  It's a project that represents the future of coffee farming according to both FAF and us. Here, they plant trees of the Mahogany, Moringa, and Banana varieties – alongside their coffee trees – and increase the farm's biodiversity. This is to create a natural and regenerative ecosystem where each plant has its time, place, and function. All to provide coffee with a place to thrive.

The coffees are essentially the same. The quality is just as good. Our love for the coffee, producers and craftsmanship remains unchanged. We’ve simply made it easier and clearer for our customers. And we’ve taken the packaging to a new level!