A new coalition of leading coffee companies has partnered with aerospace firm Airbus to create the first comprehensive, openly accessible map of global coffee production. The initiative, named the Coffee Canopy Partnership, was initiated by JDE Peet’s and includes Louis Dreyfus Company, Sucden, Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, Touton, Sucafina, and Tchibo. The project's primary goal is to provide the industry with a critical tool to combat deforestation and facilitate compliance with the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
The partnership aims to solve a persistent challenge in the coffee supply chain: the lack of precise, large-scale data on where coffee is grown, which complicates efforts to verify deforestation-free sourcing. Using Airbus's high-resolution Pléiades Neo satellite imagery combined with artificial intelligence, the project will map coffee landscapes to identify deforestation risks. The initial phase is a pilot project covering 1.2 million square kilometers in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda, with a completion target of June 2026. The group aims for full global coverage by 2027.
According to participants, the resulting map will be a shared public good, designed to move the industry beyond fragmented, individual corporate sustainability efforts. By creating a reliable, sector-wide data source, the partnership intends to empower roasters, governments, and farmers to collectively manage deforestation risks. A stated objective is to prevent the exclusion of smallholder farmers from international markets due to their inability to provide the granular location data required by new regulations.