Health conscious people with an interest in sourcing and consuming organic products look for approved certification status on packaging.
Generally, this primarily relates to products that are grown and processed locally in Australia and in most cases there will be an Australian Certified Organic (ACO) symbol appearing on the packaging.
When it comes to coffee beans, the majority of the green (or raw) coffee beans are grown and processed (removal of cherry fruit from seed bean) at origin outside of Australia - typically in regions such as Southern and Central America, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, some Pacific islands near the equator and African countries.
In these cases, the certification is performed by an approved local country authority or external inspectors visiting farms and reviewing the processing and verifying records, or in the case of many Central and Southern American countries it may have the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) stamp of approval marked on the coffee bag or sack used for transporting the raw coffee beans.
It is important to bear in mind that a USDA stamp does not mean a product automatically achieves or complies with the Australian Certified Organic requirements.
We firmly believe in complete transparency when dealing with our customers. In this regard we roast Organic coffees that have been certified at origin only - primarily FAIRTRADE coffees that are double certified Organic.
We do not sell or package any products with labels stating ACO certification.
You may well ask why the double certified FAIRTRARE and Organic ?
Many years ago a mix of non-Organic FAIRTRADE and double-certified coffee was imported into Australia by the coffee brokers. Over the last 4 - 5 years, the demand for non-Organic FAIRTRADE diminished and thus brokers literally stopped or limited their buying and importing on the non-Organic FAIRTRADE coffee beans to the point where it is extremely difficult to source a non-Organic FAIRTRADE coffee.