Behind the scenes of the Fairtrace platform: 3 Questions to Luis Pastor

Luis, Fairtrace was launched seven years ago. What has been the impact of the reporting platform?

LP: Fairtrace has revolutionised reporting for Fairtrade-certified companies. Traffic on this central hub for collecting crucial information about Fairtrade transactions has increased by 750% compared to the previous platform. Today, around 6,000 organisations use Fairtrace, reporting and verifying more than 500,000 transactions per year. In 2023, 96 companies reported over 1,000 transactions each. When it comes to single products, the most transactions reported are for perishable products, typically traded on a weekly basis, like bananas and flowers, with 100,000 and 65,000 transactions in 2023.

So, the impact is obvious: Our customers have more transparency and greater control over their Fairtrade transactions. They see who they buy from and sell to, know details about the respective product and its volume, and the Fairtrade Price and Premium that was paid. If something is wrong, they can immediately interject. Over half a million transactions reported annually also really impacted our efforts of data cleaning and data quality checks.

How does Fairtrace support the credibility of Fairtrade?   

LP: With Fairtrace, we get information from the entire supply chain, from the producer up to the last certified trader. The data helps us to monitor and verify compliance to increase the trust in the Fairtrade Mark, for the benefit of all in the Fairtrade system. Thanks to Fairtrace, via an internal system of early alerts, we can react before the audit when important deviations from the Fairtrade Standards occur, such as trading Fairtrade with non-certified companies or paying too low prices or premiums. Fairtrace data also supports the work of our auditors, for example as they prepare for an audit: When they arrive at the audit, they already know about past transactions of the customer, and are aware of any transactions where the prices and premiums paid deviated from the requirements.

You mention data quality. How does FLOCERT check that the data reported in Fairtrace is correct?

LP: Only with high-quality data can we make the best use of Fairtrace. High quality in this context means that the reported data has to be complete and correct. In terms of data completeness, Fairtrace automatically sends email reminders to users who forgot to report on time. For those reports that have been missing or pending for a longer period of time, the support team reaches out to the customers. To prevent errors when a user enters information, Fairtrace uses data entry validations. Since it is not possible to fully automate all checks, we must, in addition, analyse the data with internal tools to find potential entry errors. If we identify a mistake, in most cases we have to contact the organisation which originally reported the data, so it can correct it. We have an expert-level support team of four people dedicated to identifying these entry mistakes and helping organisations with the corrections.