FOR AVAILABLE COFFEE AND TEE STOCKS NEAR YOU
Welcome to Almacena Platform!
Get ready for the next step after traceability and leap forward to inclusive PRODUCER CENTRED VALUE CHAINS focused on impact & value creation.
For centuries the global allocation of valued commodities such as coffee/tea has been the almost exclusive domain of international traders. What if African producers are empowered to do the same and provide roasters & packers the same service from ORIGIN to FINAL DESTINATION in EU, USA (or UAE, ASIA)?
That means 100% Traceability, Price Transparency and DIRECT TRADE. More importantly DIRECT IMPACT IN RURAL AFRICA.
Start SOURCING/ SELLING DIRECT today: Almacena is your service- partner guaranteeing 100 % transparency & dedicated service for all stakeholders:
Access to Finance
Finance is no longer a barrier. Almacena provides finance of coffee and tea inventories in Origin countries, In transit and at End Markets alike, enabling direct trades between producers and final buyers.
Both sides of the value chain benefit from attractive rates and a fully transparent cost structure. Producers get the necessary cash advances to pay suppliers, banks and next crop preparation, while roasters and tea packers benefit from Just in Time delivery and effectively get their stock financed until purchase, freeing up working capital and bank lines.
Market access
Almacena Platform offers a sales channel to African producers and a Procurement hub for end buyers. We take control of the supply chain and manage operational work and physical assets in full transparency. Coffee/ Tea is identified already at farm gate accompanied with digital tracking all the way to final destination. Verifiable producer profiles and production data ensures full transparency.
Almacena is a service provider. We facilitate the necessary infrastructure to enable trades and charge a minimal fixed fee for our services that reach from sourcing at origin to marketing and distribution to final buyers.
Risk Management and Quality Control
Almacena makes trades possible by managing the respective risks and offering solutions to both sides in the deal. We internalise costs and take the market risk for the producer while we also finance the stocks in Europe, US and Dubai. We also can provide attractive payment terms and hedging facilities for navigating C- market volatility. Reservation of stocks is also possible and selected buyers can benefit from deferred payment.
Quality control is an essential part of our services. We have local teams on the ground and work with vetted producers to ensure best coffees/tea reach roasters and packers at attractive prices. Quality is checked at all steps along the journey in local labs and analysed by expert Q-grader in the Netherlands.
Last but not least, we maintain inventories in stock on behalf of the producers so buyers can actually buy coffee/ tea that is already next door.
Logistics and Professional Storage
Almacena handles the logistics and operation from Origin to Consumer countries. Producers are empowered to strategically position their stocks at convenient locations near Roasters/ Packers for delivery at instruction. Almacena ensures professional handling and insurance of the goods combined with dedicated service from well established corporate partners specialised in Transport, Forwarding, Inspection & Warehousing.
Data & Reporting
We provide detailed information about the producers, the provenance of the coffee and its specs. Trade data is available online to both producers and buyers including the location of the coffee, deal status and more.
Separate impact reports and integrated IRIS metrics keep track of progress versus SDG goals, showing contribution at aggregated and individual counterparty/trade level.
Roasters and Tea Packers
Responsible and Transparent Supply Chain
Coffee and Tea Owners
Unlock Your Potential
TO BECOME AN ALMACENA PRODUCER Contact Us.
About Us
We unite Impact Investing and Commodity Trading with technology in an innovative approach to empower Rural Africa
Dutch Agtech
We use Cloud, NFC and Blockchain to create digital IDs of the coffees, immutable data records of the producers and the provenance and route of the coffees in full transparency to all supply chain players.
We use data records to build farmers' IDs to unlock microloans and enable financial inclusion in rural Africa.
Trading as a Service
Whether you need to move goods across continents, finance and insure cargoes, build inventories in consumption markets or hedge commodity prices, you can count on the Almacena service.
We manage the risks and we take the responsibility.
You pay for the service you use. No intermediaries; no black boxes.
Real Impact
We shorten the supply chain to create efficiencies for both sides on the coffee trade.
We bring producers out of anonymity and facilitate relationships.
We create higher income, we promote sustainable practices and reward gender balanced approach to business.
Our goal is to impact 800 000 smallholders across East Africa until 2025.
More on Impact
Coffee and Tea production in East Africa is a smallholder activity: 400.000 households in Rwanda, 600.000 households in Burundi, 400.000 households in Tanzania, 1.700.000 households in Uganda, etc.
These are the communities that need most attention to transform the local economies and boost economic activity.
At Almacena Platform, we believe with the help of private individuals acting as investors, we can collectively help Rural Africa achieve a better and more sustainable future.
In the UN Framework of Sustainable Development Goals, we aim to address:
NO POVERTY
Giving African Growers and their families an affordable finance alternative in an intuitive and flexible manner
GENDER EQUALITY
Actively promoting Women-only Cooperatives and offering special rates of finance to stimulate women professional employment
DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
Helping with job retention at Rural areas. Creating directly jobs for our African branches.
REDUCED INEQUALITIES
Enabling Access to EU Markets and Higher Value Retention for the African Growers by offering financing at Destination Markets and Export Hubs
RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION
Promoting Fair Trade, Organic and Best Agri Practices and Responsible Sourcing on our Platform
Our Mission & Vision
Commodity Trading as a Service
to Empower Rural Africa
Sub-Saharan countries hard currency revenues come mostly from export of agricultural products like coffee and tea. However, little value is retained by the local economy. One of the reasons is the lack of affordable finance alternatives to the local agriculture business and therefore the pressure to sell the production and export raw commodities as soon as possible.
Furthermore, African producers’ income locally is a direct function of the international prices which are very volatile and African specialty coffee growers and small traders typically have no means to reach final consumer markets or sell directly to final buyers.
Almacena offers a new model to challenge and disrupt this paradigm.
We are backed by impact investors interested to make an impact and empower the African business to unlock their potential.
More on technology
As with all things new, technology plays an important part in our journey and is key to enable impact. Technology keeps changing our world and we want to use the latest developments to make impact investing available to ordinary people, more secure and efficient and fully scalable. New developments and collaborative technologies like smart paper / NFC tags, DLT and cloud services are an integral part of Almacena Platform approach
Our Technology
We combined our expertise and experience to create an innovative platform offering.
- Intuitive user experience on Desktop and Mobile browsers optimized for slow internet connections.
- Flexible service request setup and deal capture process.
- Virtual Wallet allowing manual and automatic investments, full visibility of the expected returns.
- Secured cloud infrastructure (AWS), encrypted SSL communication.
- Payment provider integration with PayPal and iDeal.
Our Roadmap
We follow a roadmap with new features available every month.
- Easy integration with third party systems through secured API.
- Integrated KYC and AML checks, rich user profiles with multiple documents upload.
- Secure ownership transfer in secured and trusted Blockchain network.
- Secure documents exchange and traceable facts by Blockchain document signing and smart contracts.
- NFC tags integrated in commodity products to track commodity location and provide secure product identity.
- Mobile app with integrated NFC.
Who We Are
Dimo Yanchev
Founder / CEOM: + 31 620 397 594
Before starting the Almacena project, Dimo was Global Head Structured Inventory Products at ING, based in Amsterdam. He has 19 years of international banking experience in trade, export and commodity finance gained with leading commodity finance banks and has personally originated and executed numerous commodity and supply chain finance deals in emerging and developed markets. Previous roles include Head Trade and Export Finance in Santander (Paris) for France and Benelux, EMEA Head Commodity Monetization at RBS (London), VP Agricultural Structured Trade Finance in ABN Amro (Amsterdam) and Branch Manager BNP Paribas (Bulgaria). Dimo speaks English, French, Russian and Bulgarian. He is of Bulgarian origin and has an MBA degree from London Business School.
Adidjah Makangira
Head of PartnershipsM: + 31 612 289 011
As founder of Farmers & Co, Adidjah spent the past 7 years investing in relationships with small scale agri-producers and private processors of coffee and tea in East Africa, with strong focus on the Great Lake Region (Burundi, DRC, Uganda, Rwanda) where she has paternal roots (other half Dutch). Inspired by the vast agricultural potential and demand for improved market linkage with consuming markets, she has gained first hand experience with the challenges of fragmented supply chains, so characteristic to rural areas in East Africa. As a coffee & tea buyer she has met with many growers and producers struggeling to connect to market demand due to pressure on liquidity, often ending up compromising on quality and volume of the final products.
Vasil Dimov
Co-founder / COOM: + 31 682 217 414
Vasil has 18+ years of expertise in IT, which he acquired as CTO and managing partner in one of the leading outsourcing companies in Bulgaria working for clients as Coca Cola, Philips, A1. He has executive-level experience in Project and Portfolio management, Product Design and Development, Client management, Business development and operations. He has proven to be an excellent technology visionary and business strategist. Vasil has a Bachelor degree in Computer Science from the American University in Bulgaria and а MSs degree in Software Technologies from Sofia University.
Advisory Board
Blog & News
Challenges and Opportunities to improve the livelihoods of Smallholder Farmers
Challenges and Opportunities to improve the livelihoods of Smallholder Farmers To be a smallholder farmer undoubtedly means to be part of the driving force that provides the basis for economies in developing communities such as the East African. And no matter how prosperous this may sound and regardless of the huge state`s dependency on agriculture export for foreign currency, farmers` lives are filled with uncertainty and great challenges. Although coffee and tea are the main cash-crops in East Africa, smallholder farmers are illogically not benefiting at all from these relatively rich industries and high income earners.
The effects of the Fair Trade system and the choice of new alternatives
You have probably heard or at least guess that coffee is one of the world`s most popular beverages as well as the second most traded commodity after petroleum. But did you know that on average according to the International Coffee Organization around 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed everyday by people all over the world? And when we spare a minute to think about all the hard work, efforts, time and resources that farmers put into growing and harvesting their production, we tend to neglect on major thing. This billion-dollar business that involves and connects people across continents, cultures and social classes unfortunately shows one huge downfall – the unfair treatment of small coffee producers.
Partners
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