Launching Trade Facilitation with Almonds

Dear Producers Trust Community,

It has long been our intention to be the transparent, digital facilitator that minimizes the need for extractive intermediaries. We work to reduce producers’ dependence on traders, brokers, and wholesalers by establishing direct value chains between producer groups and downstream distributors, brands, retailers, and consumers. 

Producers Market is 10 months into its beta version. We’ve worked out many kinks and have swiftly grown our membership to 400+ organizations in 60+ countries with 1200+ products.

StoryBird has completed 10+ pilot runs with blockchain integration and is now scaling to 50+ value chains globally. The Producers Stories media platform is generating high-quality original content, and our Instagram community has organically hit 150,000+ followers.

We are achieving our goals, and we are now ready to launch our newest division: TF (Trade Facilitation). 

That’s right, we are stepping up. Producers Market is now providing an added-value service for its producer members and buyer clients through the direct trade of organic bulk goods to the global market. 

We’ve built a business model that permits producer members to register their profiles for free on Producers Market, and to then directly connect to buyers without any costs or fees for this service.

However, this free service has its limitations in many value chain transactions. 

Value chains are fragmented, and the adoption of a fully digitized sales, logistics and financial services ecosystem is still a few years away, in our opinion. As such, we have decided to fill the trading gap. 

Producers Market is partnering with best-in-class producer group members to serve as their commercial agent for the North American and other target markets. We will be managing sales, importation, logistics, accounts receivables, and customer services with our North American wholesale buyers as we connect their purchases to our producer members. In addition, we will further integrate these value chains with engaging StoryBirds. 

We commit to sharing transparently with our downstream buyers about the source of our raw materials, without concern for the potential of being “cut out.” Simultaneously, we commit to treating our producers as partners, sharing with them all the details of our sales activities, including pricing and margins.

Our first trading focus will begin with organic almonds from Sicily, Italy.

In its pilot transparent trade project, Producers Market will have organic almonds available for bulk sale to distributors, brands, and retailers, with the optionality of StoryBird integration.

Producers Market is delighted to introduce you to our inaugural trade facilitation partner, Expergreen.

Expergreen is a world-class almond grower, aggregator, processor, and packer based in Sicily, with packing in Alba, Italy. Expergreen shares our values of traceability, transparency, and a commitment to sourcing with a focus on ecological and social well-being.  Sicily is an ideal source for almonds, too, with a rich history of almond cultivation that dates back to 1,000 BCE!

Almonds are a special crop for our team. We love all things almonds—whole almonds, almond butter, almond milk, sliced almonds, baked goods made with almond flour, almond ice cream. It’s yummy, it’s healthy, and it comes from a tree.

Almonds can often be an ecologically controversial crop. An incredibly water-intensive product, a single almond requires 1.1 gallons of water to grow. A pound takes 1,900 gallons. In California, where the majority of almonds are cultivated, and in Australia as well, there are severe issues around water shortages and droughts. The future of almond production in these locations is uncertain. Bringing to market an organic almond from Sicily has both commercial and ecological merits. 

Please reach out to our trade facilitation team at Producers Market with any inquiries regarding our almonds, or if you are an organic producer looking to work with our trade facilitation services:

Regards,