50 years of GEPA - Taste a fair world!
10.9 percent more sales in 2024; fairness counts: looking ahead
In turbulent economic and political times, it is clear that justice is crucial for a future worth living - especially in view of half a century of fairness, which GEPA will celebrate on May 14, 2025. As part of its annual and anniversary press conference, the fair trade pioneer has now reported on the completed financial year 2024 in a livestream and looked at fairness moments, milestones and future measures.
Rethinking the economy
GEPA and the fair trade movement with its worldshops and all those involved were already drawing attention to the consequences of "cheap" being the only maxim when it comes to purchasing. As a pioneer, GEPA took a stand early on and tackled the issues of today. Starting from two apartments as the first company headquarters in Wuppertal-Barmen, central impulses for sustainable, fair lifestyles have emerged since 1975 - also for the new, younger social businesses of today. The aim was and is to rethink business.
Sales increase in 2024 over previous year - positive start in 2025
"We closed the 2024 financial year on an extraordinarily positive note," explained Commercial Director Matthias Kroth. GEPA achieved a wholesale turnover of 84.8 million euros, an increase of around 10.9 percent compared to the previous year. Consumers purchased products such as coffee, chocolate, tea, honey and handicrafts for around 118.6 million euros (turnover at retail prices). "We therefore exceeded expectations. Growth was driven in particular by our organic chocolate. We are also pleased that we made a very positive start to the anniversary year in the first three months compared to the previous year. The sharp rise in raw material prices, for example for coffee and cocoa, as of April 1, 2025 made it necessary to further adjust our retail prices. However, our sales in April are also noticeably above the previous year's level," said Matthias Kroth.
Because fairness counts - especially now
"We would like to thank all consumers for the tailwind into our anniversary year," explained Managing Director Brand and Sales, Peter Schaumberger. "As a fair trade pioneer, we joined forces with the fair trade movement 50 years ago to make the supply chain and the people behind the product visible. We demonstrated the responsibility that companies, consumers and politicians have to make trade fairer," says Peter Schaumberger. The "Jute instead of plastic" campaign in 1978, the first fair organic coffee from Mexico "Organico" in 1986, the first fair organic chocolate in Germany, produced in 2000, and the first fair organic chocolate with fair milk in 2011 are milestones from 50 years of GEPA. With "fairness as the 'most valuable ingredient', we are also heading into the future - this will be on more and more products in the future," said Peter Schaumberger. With the message "It's in your hands", GEPA wants to encourage new and younger consumers to contribute to a fairer world. This is the aim of the brand relaunch launched last year, which will continue this year with a focus on coffees such as "Organico" and "Dein Pfund Fairness". Peter Schaumberger also referred to the greeting from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier: "... I would like to thank you and, on the occasion of your anniversary, encourage you to continue to stand up for more humanity in our dealings with producers in the global South. Our goal should be to turn the principles of fair trade from the exception into the rule". To the complete greeting.
Gifty Rosetta Amo Antwi, Managing Director of the Weltladen umbrella organization, congratulated the fair trade company: "GEPA stands for fair trade at the highest level - as a pioneer of global justice and an example of the combination of values and economic success. GEPA and the Weltladen umbrella organization, which is also celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, have been working closely together for more justice in trade ever since. Even before GEPA was founded, there were worldshops and action groups whose growing activities made it necessary to establish an import and wholesale organization in 1975 - with the Weltladen-Dachverband as a founding member.
Torsten Müller, Head of Finance at Bread for the World and spokesman for the GEPA shareholders' meeting, emphasized: "GEPA is an extraordinary ecumenical company that emerged from the church youth movement. It is also thanks to GEPA's commitment that today social and ecological responsibility has a high priority in business and politics. We want to work together to ensure that this remains the case in the future and is further expanded. The social goals that we gave GEPA back then are still relevant today: to support producer groups in the Global South through fair trade relations, to educate consumers about conscious consumption and to contribute to changing unjust world trade structures.
Andrea Fütterer, Head of Policy and Politics, emphasized the role of GEPA partners in the Global South: "Long-term trade partnerships are at the heart of our work, because it is about trusting cooperation, mutual learning, reliability and security for both sides. Our best example: Prokritee in Bangladesh. We have been working with them since 1977, i.e. for 48 years. We receive basketry from them, among other things."
In their video greetings, representatives such as Fanny Huancas Chingel from the Sol y Café coffee cooperative in Peru thanked GEPA for the intensive cooperation: "Fair Trade helps us a lot. We are improving every day, we can produce better and we coffee farmers have a better quality of life". The organic green coffee from Sol y Café is an important component of today's organic coffee "Organico", for example, and we are currently strongly committed to the issue of climate justice together with our trading partners, said Andrea Fütterer: "'People and Planet Before Profit' must continue to be our only guiding principle, especially today, when there are more and more forces that want to turn back the clock, for example away from the supply chain law towards neo-colonialism," said Andrea Fütterer.
As a Fair Trade pioneer, GEPA, founded on May 14, 1975, has stood for transparency and credibility in its work for 50 years. As Europe's largest fair trade organization, we trade with cooperatives and socially committed private companies from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. Fair prices and long-term trading relationships give our partners more planning security. GEPA is backed by Misereor, Bread for the World, the Association of Protestant Youth in Germany (aej), the Federation of German Catholic Youth (BDKJ) and the children's missionary organization "Die Sternsinger". GEPA has received numerous awards for its services to fair trade and sustainability, including TOP3 at the German Sustainability Award in the "Corporate Partnerships 2020" category for its long-standing cooperation with tea partner Tea Promoters India and the "CSR Award of the German Federal Government 2020" in the "Responsible Supply Chain Management" category, as well as the German SDG Award in the "Company" category at the end of 2023. GEPA is one of the few companies in Germany to be audited according to the WFTO guarantee system.
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
Other news from the department business & finance
