Company Background

Cleopa Ayo visited Usambara mountains in early 80's as a student,he immediately fell in love with East Usambara mountains. After completing college, he held various managerial positions in state owned corporations before he decided to pursue career in business starting from a home based family factory producing natural high-quality bread spreads that was attractively packaged and sold to leading hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and tourism entities throughout Tanzania through brand named “Golden African” under GFP Ltd.

Whilst sourcing fruits from Usambara mountains for the jams, he began conducting advocacy activities in the villages such as creating awareness amongst the farmers and encouraging them to register for the organic spice project which led to the birth of GFP Organics Ltd in 2011. Complimentary to this, preparations were made to set up processing facilities.

Previously, from 2005 the spice activities were conducted under the umbrella of GFP Ltd, based in Arusha.

GFP Organics Ltd is a social enterprise that applies commercial strategies to improve human and environmental wellbeing, this includes maximizing social impact alongside profits for shareholders.

MISSION: ”to consistently endeavour to supply our clients at all times sustainable and safely processed organics spices produced from natural raw materials sourced from contracted small – scale farmers who are well trained in organic farming best practises while observing environmental conservation practices and effective control of food safety hazards”

VISION: “to become a leading Tanzanian manufacturer and processor of choice for high quality and safe organic spices and tea herbs for both the local and exports markets that meet agreed customer, applicable regulatory and international requirements by using only natural ingredients”

VALUES: Sustainability, Value for Money, Environmental Conservation, Transparency

Organic Farming

With the increasing consumer and market consciousness and demand for health, safety and environment accountability, the shift has been towards sourcing of more sustainable spices. The volatile prices of conventional spices which are in down trend make conventional spices production not viable especially in the small holder context.

Our farmers are trained to become certified organic farmers, the farmers who take part in the project do not use chemicals to spray the crops, neither do they use artificial chemicals. They are encouraged to use organic fertilizers which improve soil fertility in the long term. Organic farming has proven to have a positive impact in the economic and social development of the farmers, enabling them to improve their livelihoods in a significant way. Complimentary to increasing farm productivity, family incomes and health have improved tremendously, not only from better diets, but also by removing expensive and often toxin farm inputs, protecting both human and animal’s health. The spices grown are perennial crops, these crops give a permanent cover of the soils and slopes of the hills, reducing erosion and soil depletion. Black pepper needs trees as a support to grow. That means that black pepper production increases tree planting. As a result, the organic spice production is contributing fervently to conservation of trees and soils.

Quality Control

The most essential tool for selling organic products is the analysis of an accredited independent and specialized laboratory in the country of consumption. The analysis of such labs can be considered as the last word of the independent accredited chemist on the acceptance or the rejection of the merchandise. Since errors always may happen, a test result should always be analyzed critically by the parties involved. All labs can issue the test results in English language. The most representative analysis is to be considered the one of the merchandise landed at buyer's warehouse and sample taken on a square root basis.

The quality starts in the 'field of production', this is a well-known fact. Post-harvest processing is also known to be the second challenge to producing high-quality spices. Producing high quality spices can only happen with the right practices and processing methods to ensure best results. This does not mean that high-tech is not required at the processing facility. Some spices are processed and handled in the same way for centuries. Nowadays, the processing facility must ensure that international food standards are implemented which includes the objective of the elimination of any source of contamination risks. The advantage of the centralized processing is that all raw materials can be controlled equally on quality aspects from the first moment of receiving the freshly harvested crop. They must undergo a strict and centralized quality control before reception and further processing in the facility. Not suitable qualities have to be rejected in order to achieve an educational effect with farmers.

The responsibilities for food safety are important and the arrangements that we have in place to implement the Food Safety Management System are set out in the Food Safety Policy.

Social Impact

GFP identified the challenges faced by farmers in the Usambara Mountains, Tanga Region and through collaborative and social-economic enterprise development intervention approach provided a solution. As mentioned earlier the challenges for the small-scale farmers are shared countrywide; the farmers grow high value crops (spices) but are continuously being exploited by spot market traders who offer low prices and never guarantee a market. These high value crops are black and white pepper, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, lemongrass, turmeric and lemons/oranges. Because of this type of trading practices, there was no incentive for the farmers to grow for quality. The result was that the potential of the crops was not fully optimized, no extra value addition of the crop was being created. Through this kind of trading practices, the farmers were always at a disadvantage.

GFP has been able to put into place structures and practices that counteract the negative trading practices that have been dominant in the Usamabara Mountains. Such structures include capacity building on sustainable organic farming best practices, building transparent trade relationships with farmers while also making spice farming attractive by offering competitive prices with a guaranteed market for both matured and young farmers. The key was to bring the processing of the crops and the preparation for export closer to the farmers. To this effect, processing and storage facilities have been built in a village in the middle of the production area. The whole process of buying, processing, transporting is visible, this makes the farmers feel included in the entire processing and export negotiating processes. The farmers also receive a bonus, which consists of an organic premium and a second payment for motivation, after the crop has been exported. A pre-payment plan is made available by the request of the farmer earlier in the season, this empowers them financially because they are able to cater to their daily family needs, this have proved most valuable especially during the trying financial times.

GFP continues to put deliberate efforts that results into building strong relationships in the farmers' communities. Some staff members of GFP reside in the village and also the Company's Director spends a lot of time in the production area and is well known by the farmers. GFP supports some village activities, such as sponsoring the youth football competition (also a unique opportunity to talk about the process and importance of organic farming before the match); building local school toilets, drilling and installing a water supply system in the central village, purchase of biological inputs, facilitating public awareness about COVID 19 etc.

To compliment the on the ground activities, long term market linkages have been established with organic buyers in Europe. International spice buyers are also interested in the source of the produce and hence pay visits to the production area and the farmers. During those visits they stay overnight in the village among the farmers, which builds a relationship between buyers and farmers. This empowers the farmers further as the feel connected to the global spice industry. The feeling of connection to the world is an important motivation for both old and young farmers to pursue further the production, processing, and sale of spices.