InterAmerican Coffee is pleased to announce that, going forward, all coffee purchased for our inventory will be shipped using certified biofuels.
This change allows us to reduce the fossil CO2e emissions associated with a necessary part of the coffee supply chain while maintaining the same shipping routes and logistics.
For example, transporting a standard container between New York and Santos, Brazil, using fossil fuels results in approximately 820 kilograms of CO2 emissions — roughly equivalent to driving a typical gasoline-powered car 2,000 miles. By switching to certified biofuels, we avoid those fossil emissions in our climate accounting and significantly reduce the emissions associated with ocean freight.
What Are Biofuels?
Unlike fossil fuels, which are extracted from deep in the earth, biofuels are typically produced from waste and residual materials such as used cooking oil, organic agricultural waste and sewage. By replacing fossil marine diesel, they can significantly reduce transport-related CO2e emissions without requiring changes to ship engines.
How Does It Work?
InterAmerican now purchases biofuel-based shipping for all our inventory containers through established shipping companies. This option is also available for back-to-back purchases.
The program operates under the mass balance principle. This means the biofuels are used within the shipping companies’ fleets, and the resulting emissions reductions are allocated to our shipments in accounting terms. In other words, the biofuel does not have to be used on the specific vessel carrying our coffee, but the corresponding emissions reductions are assigned to our shipments.
The shipping companies provide certificates and documentation confirming the use of biofuels and the associated emissions reductions. These are available upon request for your own sustainability communications.
We’re proud to evolve our operations in this important way. Following the lead of Neumann Kaffee Gruppe (NKG), we continue to look for practical ways to reduce the environmental impact of our operations and the coffee supply chain.
You can learn more about NKG’s efforts and commitments in the NKG Sustainability Report 2026. •
