„Transparency and reliability are essential for our fair-trade relations with people in Asia, Africa and Latin America. To this end we have further refined the criteria for our fair-trade program", declares Barbara Altmann, head of the department for strategic raw material securing at Rapunzel. The fair-trade program has been existing for more than 25 years and Rapunzel has continually developed the program together with its partners. This way, Rapunzel can label more and more products with the HIH fair-trade label, can pay additional HIH boni, can donate more money to the HIH fund and can contribute to the further spread of fair-trade. The updated HIH criteria were developed from the daily and direct interactions with currently 18 HIH partners. The HIH criteria include suggestions from independent inspectors and experts as well as the feedback from agricultural partners from Ecuador, Tanzania or Sri Lanka. In some sections of the criteria, Rapunzel included established practice and/or stated aspects more clearly. Thanks to long-time trade relations, Rapunzel keeps a close exchange at eye level with its HIH partners. This had an impact on the updated version of the HIH criteria and on the fair-trade program at the whole.
