Tive Announces Partnership with WEAL Innovations Lab to Track Specialty Coffee Shipments

We are excited to announce that Tive has launched a partnership with specialty coffee group WEAL Inc. Based in Boston, WEAL is an innovations lab that supports the development and integration of cutting-edge technology in the high-end coffee industry.

Tive will be working with WEAL to monitor the condition of in-transit coffee shipments in order to identify and eliminate in-transit damages, as well as to better understand how environmental factors such as high temperatures or excessive humidity levels reduce the quality of coffee shipments. 

A global $20 billion industry, coffee is grown in fifty countries and consumed all around the world. This market is a leader in Fair Trade certification, and authentication from source to end customer is vital. But today, there is a still data gap. B2B coffee traders often don’t know what is happening to their green coffee in transit.

As an organic product, green coffee (i.e. coffee beans which have not yet been roasted) is sensitive to excess temperature and humidity levels. Because of this, quality control during transportation from farmer to roaster is critical. In-transit environmental damage due to high temperatures or humidity can result in a coffee shipment’s Quality Score dropping from 86 to 84 or 83 – a catastrophic change that can seriously impact the value of the shipment. And with already slim margins, post-production problems that undermine quality and decrease sell price can be ruinous for farmers and importers.

In recent years, industry professionals have attempted to reduce the impact of in-transit environmental variation with advanced packaging. With packing materials that protect green coffee from moisture loss and cross-contamination, spoilage risks have decreased somewhat. But there has still been no cost-effective way to pinpoint the location and condition of these coffee shipments in-transit, and without the data, it is impossible to answer basic quality control questions such as:

• Where is my coffee?
• When will it arrive?
• Is the carrier taking the most direct route?
• What is the temperature and humidity inside the container?

Tive closes that quality control gap for the B2B specialty coffee trading supply chain. With Tive’s industry-leading multi-sensor tracker, it becomes possible to identify exactly where shipments are and how they are doing. In addition, Tive’s analytics dashboard presents vital real-time insights that enable data-driven decision-making.

Recently, Tive and WEAL worked together to integrate real-time tracking into the supply chain for InterAmerican Coffee, helping them to determine the precise location and condition of their in-transit coffee and to improve quality control. The Tive team is excited to continue working with WEAL to use this state-of-the-art technology to eliminate the visibility gap in the specialty coffee supply chain.

To learn more about WEAL’s work in innovative coffee solutions, visit their website here. And if you’re interested in learning more about how Tive can bring visibility to your supply chain, request a trial today.