Oscar guests will drink our coffee

By ELLEN READ

Next week's Oscar ceremony has special significance for small Hawkes Bay company Kea Foods.

Its organic coffee will be served at the Academy Awards banquet sponsored by the New Zealand Government at the Beverly Hills Hilton in Los Angeles. Guests will also receive a gift pack of the product.

"When Kea was selected over all the other coffees, the seven of us here felt like Frodo and Samwise when they successfully returned the ring," said Heather Smith Martin, a Kea owner and director.

She said Kea felt a kindred spirit with Frodo as it, too, was competing to survive against enormous odds and the money and power of the multinational competitors.

The small operation is owned and directed by Smith Martin, a biologist and organic farmer who was a former US fashion model and restaurateur, and her husband, Andrew Martin.

The couple started the company just over two years ago. They came here on holiday, got married, fell in love with the country and never went home. They became citizens a year ago.

So home is now a 300ha organic farm in the Hawkes Bay, growing experimental crops including truffles and saffron.

The philosophy behind the company is not simply making money. Protecting people and the environment is its main aim, although commercial success is important, with profits ploughed back into environmental and sustainable projects.

"The key to coffee is that it's the number two traded commodity behind oil, so we figured if we could influence the world towards going organic, coffee would be a great place to start," Andrew Martin said.

The more people drink organic coffee the less poison is sprayed by the coffee farmers, - easing soil contamination and helping wildlife, he said.

"It was a philosophical decision, backed up by Heather, who said we had to do something to promote organics worldwide."

It also helps to promote New Zealand's clean, green image as, although the coffee beans are imported, the blending, roasting and packaging is done here, in conjunction with two other local firms.

Martin paid special tribute to Kea's chief executive, Jason Merrylees, saying he had done enormous amounts of work to establish and expand the company.

Kea produced roughly 20 tonnes of product (instant granulated and powdered coffee and whole coffee beans) in its first year and the amount has doubled each year.

The company developed a coffee flavour profile by testing various blends on 400 coffee drinkers. It turns out that we like our coffee more heavily roasted than European caffeine addicts.

Eight different beans - supplied by small organic coffee growers around the world - go into the final blend.

"They come specifically from 'fair trade' farms, which pay their growers a decent wage. A lot of coffee farming is done by three multinationals which buy coffee really cheaply, exploiting coffee growers to such an extent that they're really suffering," Martin said.

Non-organic coffee is commonly sprayed with 17 chemicals, nine of which are toxic to humans, he said.

After blending, roasting and packaging, Kea coffee is shipped to Australia, the US, Canada, England, Singapore, Japan and Malaysia.

"And we're just now getting into Europe - France and Germany," Martin said.

"I think that's why we got picked for the Academy Awards thing, because organics is huge over there.

"All the multinationals there are into it now because people are so conscious of what they put into their bodies."

Kea Coffee doesn't make as much money as it could because it pays more for the organic, fair trade beans and also puts the end product on the store shelf at the same price as regular coffee.

There is no organic premium which could give consumers an excuse not to pick a more expensive product.

"The whole philosophy is to keep the price the same as non-organic coffee. Most people say they won't buy organic because of the price, so it eliminates that."

In spite of efforts to keep the price down, Martin admits the coffee sells better overseas than locally.

"New Zealand is a hard market because people are just not that knowledgeable about organics."


Kea has done some local advertising to spread the word and the coffee's bright yellow packaging was carefully chosen to ensure it stood out on the shop shelf.

What profits are made help to finance a medical clinic in Jakarta and a raft of environmental programmes.

"We don't really have that much profit so it probably sounds more than it is," Martin said. The farm provides the income for the couple to live on.

Helping with environmental projects is in Andrew Martin's blood. Before settling in New Zealand he set up several food companies in the US, then sold them to multinationals and put the money into various non-profit projects.

"And Kea was one of them. It was definitely non-profit for a while," he laughs.

Good works is in Heather Smith Martin's background, too. She has worked as an undercover agent for environmental groups studying the endangered species trade in Vietnam.

"She was buying crocodile teeth and all this stuff that was illegal and documenting it. Then she came back and testified in front of Congress that Vietnam was violating this international treaty and helped them enforce the ban on killing endangered species," Martin said.

She then studied organic and soil biology.

Plans for Kea include keeping the growth going.

Said Andrew Martin: "The reception around the world has been really strong and we've got wonderful people involved with the company, so I think we can just keep growing it and making it a really successful New Zealand brand."

Kea coffee