Rebuild Facility launches Technical Assistance Facility
The Rebuild Facility has launched a technical assistance facility aimed at supporting cocoa and coffee supply chain actors to meet the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) requirements.
The EUDR is part of the European Green Deal and is aimed at reducing the EU’s contribution to global deforestation. The new regulations require companies trading in cocoa, coffee, cattle, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood, including products derived from these commodities, to conduct extensive due diligence on their value chains to ensure the goods do not result from recent (post-December 31, 2020) deforestation, forest degradation or breaches of local environmental and social laws. These obligations will apply from December 30, 2024.
Rebuild Facility’s new technical assistance facility supports aggregators, roasters, processors, and exporters of sustainable cocoa and coffee from project countries Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire for cocoa, and Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda for coffee.
The focus areas for technical assistance packages include:
Traceability, regulation and data management; enabling coffee and cocoa businesses to meet EUDR traceability requirements and be able to track the movement of coffee and cocoa from the origins to the EU market.
Unlocking additional finance; supporting business to identify and access the right kind of finance to scale up their operations.
Strategy development and governance; strengthening the leadership and governance of the businesses to increase revenue and/or improve investor readiness.
These focus areas were identified as support needs with coffee and cocoa market stakeholders with whom the project has worked over the last four years.
The Technical Assistance facility will run alongside the project’s returnable grants facility, through which the Rebuild Facility has supported 21 sustainable cocoa and coffee companies with working capital financing. Rebuild Facility’s returnable grants facility has generated over 19.3 million euros in revenue and additional funding for grantee companies, secured the incomes of over 42,600 smallholder farmers, and kept over 78,350 hectares of land under sustainable land management.
Applications for technical assistance under focus area one are currently open, and implementation will begin in September 2024.
The Rebuild Facility also welcomes applications from delivery partners with experience in providing technical assistance in the African cocoa and coffee sectors.
Please see here for more information on the application process for market access players and here for details for delivery partners.
Interested delivery partners may register their interest here.
For further information, please reach out to:
Deeptanshu Kotru (Technical Assistance Lead) via Deeptanshu.kotru@systemiq.earth, or
Eric Mensah (Technical Assistance Implementation Coordinator) via Eric.mensah@thepalladiumgroup.com
About the Rebuild Facility:
The Rebuild Facility provides interest-free working capital and technical assistance to sustainable coffee and cocoa companies, with the goal of protecting smallholder livelihoods, conserving tropical forests, and strengthening the private sector.
The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) and the International Climate Initiative (IKI) and is jointly implemented by Palladium International and Systemiq under the umbrella Regeneration Platform.
Regeneration is a partnership between Systemiq, the system change company, and Palladium, a global positive impact firm.