Nico Roozen
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Nico Roozen (born in 1953) is Director of Solidaridad, a Dutch organisation for development cooperation.
Nico Roozen studied history in Amsterdam and theology in Utrecht. In 1984 he started working with Solidaridad, an organisation for development cooperation which initially focused on Latin America, but later on started operating worldwide. Initially, he was employed as campaigner. In 1990 he was appointed director of Solidaridad. Under his direction Solidaridad has developed into an internationally recognized organisation, with a very specific expertise in the development of models which have contributed significantly to bridge the gap between the work of charities on the one hand and industry, trade and retail companies on the other.
In 1988 Nico Roozen launched the Max Havelaar label for fair trade coffee. This was the world’s first fair trade label and it has formed the basis for local fair trade labelling initiatives in Europe, Japan, Austrialia/New Zealand and the USofA and Canada, locally known as Max Havelaar or TransFair. These are currently organized in the international Federation of Fair Trade Labelling Organisations (FLO). The Max Havelaar label was developed together with a Mexican organization of indigenous coffee producers, accompanied by the Dutch priest Frans van der Hoff[1]. The label permitted commercial traders and brands to step in and start trading a part of their product at preferential conditions and it permitted producers to take their development process into their own hands by raising the income of individual producers and their organisations.
In 1996 a new fair trade product was introduced: fair trade bananas. For this purpose he established the fresh fair trade fruit importer AgroFair BV, which has grown into a – half producer owned - multinational in fair trade tropical fruits (bananas, mangoes, pineapples, avocados and citrus) with brands as Oké and Eko Oké. Late 2006 a subsidiary of AgroFair was established in the USA, by the name of Oké USA Fruit Company.
As from 2000 on he started developing a model for fair trade textiles. In 2001 he launched the trendy fair trade jeans brand Kuyichi, which has developed into a European jeans and tops brand. In 2006 a fair textiles company was created, Fair&Co, for the development of custom made organic and fair trade concepts and brands for retailers.
For all products supply chains are developed to feed the ‘own’ and commercial brands/importers/retailers participating in fair trade. Wherever possible the companies created or participating are co-owned by producer organizations that are at the beginning of the supply chain.
As from 2003, Solidaridad has been developing or co-developing a number of programmes aiming at creating workable tools for companies willing to take up their corporate social responsibility, starting with an initiative for the coffee sector, Utz Kapeh, followed by MADE-BY for garments. Solidaridad also participates in the Green Gold Label for sustainable biomass and has expanded, together with major retailers and importers, the Utz Kapeh model to other products, such as tea, cocoa, fruit, soy and biomass. For this purpose, the name of Utz Kapeh was changed into ‘Utz Certified, Good Inside’. These CSR initiatives aim not so much at consumer behaviour, but at company’s behaviour, and function as codes of conduct, combined with a communication tool.
Nico Roozen is the current President of the Board of Utz Certified.
The aim for the common years is to develop an international expertise network with expertise in sustainable supply chain management, focusing on the one hand on the strengthening of existing sustainable trade chains and the development of new chains, and on the other hand on supporting companies to make their supply chains more fair and sustainable. As director of Solidaridad, Nico Roozen is leading this process, in which Solidaridad (related) offices in India, China, Botswana, Kenya, Ghana, Peru, Argentina and Guatemala are involved.
In 2009, Nico Roozen was invited to become member of the Task Force Biodiversity and National Resources as installed by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality and presided by former Minister Hans Alders), as well as the Committee for Biodiversity, recently installed by the same Ministry.