Lehmus Roastery & Sustainability

 

The staff of Lehmus Roastery planted linden trees on Rakuunamäki in Lappeenranta in the autumn of 2021.

We planted six new linden trees in October 2022 on Rakuunamäki.

We are committed to acquiring and planting trees annually in areas where the city's budget would not otherwise be sufficient. This way, we can increase the carbon-absorbing forest in the city.

At Lehmus Roastery, we roast specialty coffee for everyone and every coffee lover. Our coffee is produced responsibly, and the farmer receives fair compensation for their product. Therefore, we can always guarantee a first-class taste experience.

 

1. Coffee

Lehmus Roastery pays a quality premium for coffee.

It all starts with the raw material, the coffee. We only buy coffee classified as specialty coffee, for which we pay a separate quality premium together with our coffee broker. The raw coffee we purchase exceeds the world market price for coffee by double or multiple times and meets the price required by Fair Trade certification.

By paying a quality premium, we encourage farmers to invest in the cultivation of high-quality and valuable coffee. Focusing on specialty coffee, we share the same values with the farmer, local partners, and the coffee broker: we want to buy great-tasting and high-quality coffee for which the farmer receives the compensation they deserve.

With a fair compensation, the farmer can operate profitably and focus on improving quality, rather than exploiting the land through intensive farming.

As a result, we get to enjoy better-tasting and more responsible coffee.

How can we ensure that all conditions are in order?

We share the responsibility for monitoring working conditions and the ethical aspects of our operations with our coffee brokers. We have not personally visited every coffee farm from which our coffee originates. Our primary collaborators are Cafe Imports and Falcon Coffees, along with their local partners.

For example, in Brazil, our local partner is Carmo Coffees, a coffee exporter operating in the Pedralva region. They work with 2000 local farmers, buying coffee, providing training, and assisting farmers in developing cultivation and processing methods to enhance the value and quality of the coffee.

We purchase coffee from small-scale farmers and small-farmer communities. By buying from small-farmer communities, we can support developing markets, such as in Peru. One individual farmer may not be able to produce dozens of sacks of coffee with a specific flavor profile, but by combining the coffees with the same flavor profile from various farmers in the region, the community can offer larger quantities at once, benefiting each farmer.

On the other hand, we aim to concentrate our purchases on partnership farms whenever possible. An example of this is our collaboration with Sitio Santa Catarina in Brazil. We have been buying their specialty lots and Serra Negra and Yellow Bourbon varieties for two years.

Our goal is to buy their entire harvest in the future, provided the coffee meets certain quality criteria. Ensuring continuity for farmers is part of our responsibility – we don't just buy small batches of exceptional coffees; we strive to purchase as much of the production as possible, even if the flavor varies from one harvest to another.

Why isn't all coffee traceable to a single farm?

In many countries, like Kenya, it is practically only possible to buy coffee on a washing station basis. Local farmers sell their harvest to a local coffee processing station, which then sells the coffee further. In Kenya, a typical coffee farm is only about 1/8th of a hectare in size, and the farm's production may be a couple of sacks per year. In such cases, washing station-level traceability is the most accurate level that can be achieved.

Why another small coffee roastery?

We believe that every coffee lover deserves a bit of "lesompaa" coffee. Coffee is a luxury product that has traditionally been sold too cheaply in Finland. As a small roastery, we want to shift the focus from just the lowest price to the taste and the significance of coffee in the value chain from the farmer through the roastery to the coffee drinker's cup.

2. Environment and Emissions

Environmental impacts – and how we aim to reduce and offset them

Lehmus Roastery's primary focus is to reduce emissions generated in production, and we offset emissions that are challenging to reduce. While compensation models are still incongruent, we are doing our part to contribute to their improvement.

We have transitioned to using the simplest possible packaging solutions. The majority of our coffee packages are combinations of cardboard and plastic, with some packages made of plastic only. These packages can be recycled in plastic recycling. For our café and restaurant customers, we also offer the option to purchase coffee in 10-kilogram barrels.

In the fall of 2021, we transitioned our tea packages to lighter pre-printed boxes. This change allows us to reduce the amount of cardboard needed for tea packages by 58 percent.

Our coffee packages arrive from Europe, specifically Ukraine. Some specialty packages are ordered from the UK, although the bags are manufactured in China. The quantity of specialty packaging in our overall production is around one percent.

The disposable cups we use, manufactured by Huhtamäki, are recyclable cardboard cups.

We aim to order coffee in as large quantities as possible, even though transport emissions in the production chain are relatively small. We try to time orders so that we can order coffee in batches of 40, 100, or 150 sacks at a time. Our goal is to increase our production so that we can order a container, which is 320 sacks at once.

Our online store deliveries and the majority of wholesale trade are handled by Posti. Posti compensates for the climate emissions from the fossil fuels used in transportation by purchasing carbon credits through the Gold Standard and VSC.

Fossil gas is our biggest problem

Our coffee roastery's roasters, the Dutch Giesen W30A and W15A, use fossil liquid gas for roasting coffee. It is not possible to economically install a biogas line for our over 100-year-old brick warehouse production facilities. We are exploring the possibility of transitioning to batch-delivered biogas in the future.

We have optimized and developed gas usage over the years, including with the introduction of a new and more efficient roaster. Due to this development work and the overall increase in roasting volumes, our gas usage has decreased by as much as 75 percent per kilogram of coffee roasted from 2018 to 2021.

In addition to the shadows of the Lappeenranta fortress walls, old birch and maple trees cast their shadows, and it is not reasonable to cut them down. Therefore, we have not installed solar panels on the roof of the building, as the majority of the roof is in the shade. Our electricity comes from the city of Lappeenranta and is certified eco-electricity.

Carbon footprint and life cycle analysis, as well as emissions offsetting

We have commissioned a carbon footprint analysis of our roastery's operations from the leading Finnish expert company LCA Consulting. Currently, we use the numbers from the report internally to understand the emissions caused by our operations, enabling us to choose truly effective emission reduction measures.

To offset the emissions we produce, we have taken the following climate actions:

1. We plant trees in cooperation with the city of Lappeenranta. The agreement is long-term.

In 2021, we planted eight emperor linden trees on Rakuunamäki. A tree reaches full size in about 60 years, and the target age is 170 years, so the benefits are spread over a long period. When fully grown, one tree is estimated to sequester about a thousand kilograms of carbon dioxide.

The trees we plant increase the city's annual tree planting rate, so planting has a genuine climate impact. However, we do not count these trees towards our own offset quota because all trees planted in Finland count towards the Finnish government's emission reduction targets, and we do not want to engage in double counting.

2. We offset our carbon footprint according to international standards. Our goal is to offset our emissions up to scope 3, but currently, we have offset scopes 1–2, which means compensating for the roastery's own emissions and energy consumption. We aim to push the purchasing energy emissions of the roastery (and later the café) to zero.

We are computationally a carbon-neutral operator for the emissions generated by the roastery's and café's energy use in 2020. We have offset our own operations' emissions by acquiring an amount of carbon dioxide binding beyond our emissions with a domestically produced soil improver made from industrial by-products.

An equivalent amount of carbon dioxide to our emissions is sequestered from the atmosphere to the soil using Soilfood's Soil Enhancement Fibers, made from industrial by-products in South Karelia, focusing on domestic circular economy.

Etelä-Saimaa Front Page - November 21, 2021.

3. We are embarking on acquiring restored peatland (hereinafter carbon sink), where we will start planting a) willows and b) various plants that can be utilized in the food industry. Drained peat fields can release 20-30 tons of carbon dioxide into the air annually. By restoring such land and developing it into a carbon-binding bog, we can efficiently curb carbon dioxide emissions.
   
   
4. Our goal is to become carbon neutral in the coming years so that the energy used in our roastery and café is entirely renewable. The other emissions in our value chain (Scope 3) will be annually neutralized by increasing carbon sinks by an amount that, over their lifecycle, corresponds to the carbon emissions caused by Lehmus Roastery's operations in the atmosphere.
   Our aim is also to compensate for the emissions throughout our entire lifecycle starting from 2016.
   

3. How do we bear our corporate responsibilities in Finland?

We participate in the national "Yrityskylä" program. In the entrepreneurship day for elementary school students, one role is a coffee roaster. They grind coffee with a Wilfa grinder to be served at the Yrityskylä coffee and lunch place, also training the restaurant staff on the characteristics of specialty coffee.

Yrityskylä familiarizes students with the functioning of a real society, emphasizing the need for teamwork, independence, and decision-making. We encourage everyone, both students and adults, to actively engage in it.

During summers, in collaboration with the city of Lappeenranta, we employ underage workers with the Summer Voucher incentive to learn the basics of working life, both in production and our café.

We offer our employees indefinite-term employment contracts or contracts based on the employee's life situation as much as possible. Despite being a small company, we believe that stability brings trust and well-being to life.

We continuously develop our working conditions, occupational safety, and job satisfaction. We adhere to collective agreements and other good practices for growth companies in our operations. Every day, we strive to offer the best coffees from Finland's best roastery.

As of October 2022, our staff consisted of part-time and full-time employees:
Identifying as female: 14 people
Identifying as male: 8 people

We are proud to be responsible taxpayers. We do not engage in international tax planning or any other forms of trickery.

Moving Forward:

For us, sustainability means the future. We are responsible for our operations not only to our current stakeholders but also broadly to the surrounding society and even future generations. We operate in a global environment in many respects and are committed to continuously assessing and improving our operations. Our goal is to be the most significant and responsible coffee roastery in Finland.

Lehmus Roastery was established in 2016. We are in a learning phase in many aspects, but as we grow, we can become more impactful. As power grows, so does responsibility, and we strive to critically review our operations and continuously improve in all areas periodically.

Changes take time, but actions towards change must be taken without delay.

Established on October 22, 2016
Updated on October 15, 2022

Arttu Muukkonen
CEO, Entrepreneur