UTZ Certified

UTZ was launched in 2002 as Utz Kapeh, meaning 'Good Coffee' in the Mayan language Quiché. It was founded by Nick Bocklandt, a Belgian-Guatemalan coffee grower, and Ward de Groote, a Dutch coffee roaster, with the goal of implementing sustainability on a large scale in the worldwide market. The Solidaridad Network was another co-initiator of UTZ and assisted UTZ in becoming a global standard through financial support and field implementation.

On 7 March 2007, the Utz Kapeh Foundation officially changed its name and logo to UTZ Certified and, on 1 January 2016, shortened their name to UTZ, meaning 'Good' in the Mayan language Quiché.

In June 2017, the Rainforest Alliance and UTZ announced the intention to merge, and in January 2018, the merger was legally closed and completed. The merged organization goes by the name Rainforest Alliance.

The two organizations' certification programs run in parallel but from July 2021 a new certification program based on the 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard will be in place. Transition rules will allow holders with certification under the 2015 UTZ Certification Program to progress to be certified under the new program.

Products

Coffee

UTZ is the second largest sustainability program in the world for coffee, after 4C (The Common Code for the Coffee Community). 870,102 metric tonnes of coffee was UTZ certified in 2016.

Cocoa

On 10 October 2007, the Cocoa Program was launched. UTZ cooperated with Ahold, Cargill, Heinz Benelux, Mars, Nestlé, and ECOM Agroindustrial to set up a new certification and traceability system for sustainable cocoa. Solidaridad and Oxfam Novib also supported the initiative from the beginning.

In 2009 the first UTZ cocoa products reached the market.

As of 2014, UTZ became the largest sustainability program for cocoa in the world, and over 336,300 cocoa farmers from 16 countries were affiliated with UTZ. In 2012, 13% of the cocoa produced in the world was UTZ (535,000 T, out of global production of 2,889,000 T). By 2017, Utz was certifying "1.5 million tons of cocoa, or about two-thirds of the world's supply of certified cocoa." In 2019, "significant problems" had emerged with respect to with four of the auditing organizations working in the Ivory Coast.

Criticism

UTZ certification, like the Rainforest Alliance coffee certification program, has been criticized because it offers producers no minimum or guaranteed price for their crop. Some consider UTZ certified producer organizations to be vulnerable to the volatility of the coffee market.

Michael Conroy, an independent consultant on certification for sustainable development, criticized UTZ in his 2007 book Branded!: "the environmental standards of UTZ Certified are far weaker than those of either Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance". UTZ's standards, for example, explicitly announces that genetically modified coffee plants, though not at present available, would be allowable so long as farmers obey local regulations on their use. Any kind of chemical fertilizer may be used as long as an external, technically qualified advisor has determined the quantity of fertilizer to be used. No chemical pesticides or fungicides banned in the European Union, the U.S., or Japan may be used, but any that are acceptable in those three markets are acceptable on coffee farms if they are applied "according to the label".

In July 2012, German magazine Ökotest published an article labeling UTZ, among others, as unfair, due to a lack of pre-financing and guaranteed minimum purchase prices. In response UTZ stated that the foundation does not consider its standards fair trade, nor that it claims that they are, while maintaining that its standards contribute positively to sustainable development of tropical farming communities.

In October 2019, the Washington Post reported that UTZ certified cocoa farms were actually more likely to employ child labor than farms without the certification. Additionally, a spokesperson confirmed reports that more than 4,900 UTZ-certified farms were illegally located within national forests. UTZ identified four independent auditing firms it contracts with as the source of most of the flawed certifications.