Forging fruitful relationships

Mark Overly, president and coffee buyer of Kaladi Coffee Roasters, doesn’t recall exactly when his decades-long trading partnership with Peruvian coffee cooperative CECANOR began, but their relationship goes back to “at least 1995.” Together, they’re celebrating 30 years of work to bring high-quality, Fairtrade-certified and community-improving coffee from the northern Andes of Peru to coffee drinkers across the US. 

Mark met Isabel Uriarte and Victor Rojas, managers of the CECANOR cooperative, on a trip to Peru in the 1990’s with the late founder of Organic Products Trading Company, Garth Smith, in search of great coffee for his roastery. It was then the group established a relationship that shifted Mark’s approach to coffee sourcing in ways that are foundational for him now decades later. 

“It changed the way that I thought about things. Rather than trying to possibly find great coffee, it’s ‘How do we make great coffee?’ It was the establishment of this relationship,” Mark says. 

Almost as old as Kaladi’s partnership with CECANOR is their commitment to Fairtrade. Mark worked with Isabel and Victor to pursue Fairtrade certification for the farms of CECANOR, something he still sees as crucial to supporting the livelihoods of coffee farmers, and thereby, resilient coffee cooperatives. 

For the farmers in Peru, “Fairtrade has been a fundamental initiative in the life of CECANOR for 25 years,” says Isabel. “It has allowed the strengthening of the organization with a long-term vision and the development of management, productive and commercial capacities of its associates and the organization.” 

Impact on both ends of the value chain

Mark and Kaladi Coffee’s close collaboration with the CECANOR cooperative yielded a special product that today is Kaladi’s most popular offering: the Peru Andes Gold blend.  

The blend uses beans from each of the three regions where CECANOR’s smallholder farmer members grow coffee, offering farmers across the cooperative stable sources of income and bringing together a specially formulated combination of the unique properties – fragrance, acidity, body – of each. The result? A reliable, high-quality coffee that Kaladi Coffee Roasters uses to introduce new customers to their business. 

"It’s something that we can reproduce year after year,” Mark says. “Just as we're wanting to create a relationship with our producers, it creates a relationship with our customers because they know that Peru Andes Gold is going to be Peru Andes Gold. That is their coffee.”

Another core characteristic of Kaladi’s flagship product? The coffee is grown by women who pioneered Café Femenino, an organization dedicated to providing crucial support to women coffee farmers. Started by the women of CECANOR who saw the possibilities they could bring to life through the benefits of their Fairtrade certification, the program now impacts farmers in nine countries around the world.

"The support received from Kaladi to Café Femenino,” Isabel says, “is allowing very important changes in the lives of women and rural communities. In CECANOR, 54% of the associates are women. Likewise, women are assuming leadership in their communities. This empowerment has made it possible to reduce abuse in the home, to share decisions between men and women and to guarantee girls' education in school.”  

Celebrating and looking ahead

If you ask Mark how the partnership with Isabel, Victor and CECANOR has evolved over their decades of working together, he says that what was true on day one is still true today.

“I guess we're all more professional than we were before,” he quips, “but the relationship itself hasn't changed. It's just one of those things where we both know where the other is coming from and we know we have each other's back.”

Earlier in 2025, Mark once again visited Isabel, Victor and the farmers of CECANOR to celebrate 30 years of partnership. The milestone is a timely reminder of the importance of such long-term relationships in the midst of challenges like worsening effects of climate change and surging market prices. 

“In turbulent times like these,” Isabel says, “having business partners like Kaladi Coffee Rosters, stable and committed to a long-term perspective is an important strength for our organization.”   

In Mark’s words, “Mission accomplished, because 30 years later, we're still at this, right? None of us have given up the ghost.”  

Hear more from Mark Overly about the impact of Fairtrade certification for his company in this short video!