Visiting Guayapi and SolAlter in France

In September, Maria Hall, Shared Interest Customer Manager for Europe and Asia, and Rachel Marshall, Risk and Compliance Officer, travelled to France to meet SolAlter and Guayapi, two buyer organisations supported by the ethical investments of Shared Interest members. 

In this blog, learn more about these two businesses and the role our members play in supporting them.

SolAlter 

SolAlter is based in Saint Privat in the South of France, about 45 minutes outside of the town of Montelimar, an area famous for producing Nougat. After a 4.30am taxi, a flight into Paris, two trains and a bus ride, we finally reached Montelimar, where we stayed the night, before being picked up by SolAlter’s owner Tomas and taken into Saint Privat.  

Before reaching the SolAlter premises, we stopped at a local Biocoop store, which is France’s leading network of specialist organic food stores. Here, we saw SolAlter’s products on display, including arabica coffee, a finished chocolate product, sugar, raw cocoa and a selection of the newly developed pastes and spreads. 

After Biocoop, we continued to Tomas’s home, which he has adapted over the past 10 years to accommodate SolAlter’s operations, with separate areas for raw materials, chocolate production and finished goods storage. Tomas sources directly from cooperatives in Ecuador, whilst he has added a supplier in Peru and is exploring contacts in Colombia. 

Tomas is currently constructing a new building on his land to support coffee roasting, laboratory work and packing, with completion planned by the end of the year. This will allow more of the production steps to happen on site, reducing costs and saving time. 

Shared Interest and SolAlter 

Shared Interest has supported SolAlter since 2016, providing finance that enables Tomas to purchase crops in advance, manage stock levels efficiently, increase sales and pay farmers fairly, even when market prices fluctuate. 

Tomas' approach reflects the quiet strength that defines lasting change, built not through charity but through connection and consistency. By choosing respect over dependency, SolAlter shows that fair trade can empower communities on both sides of the supply chain. For Shared Interest members, it is a reminder that when finance is used fairly, it can help people turn opportunity into stability, and partnership into progress.

This visit helped strengthen Shared Interest's working relationship with SolAlter, resolve queries and develop a solid foundation for our continued collaboration.  For me, this visit was a great opportunity to see first-hand how a buyer can operate. I had previously pictured a buyer as a large-scale organisation with multiple departments and extensive operations. However, Tomas runs the entire business from his home, with only occasional support from one other person. 

For our team, observing this effort broadened our understanding of the different ways buyers can structure and operate, which in turn, deepens our appreciation of individual circumstances, challenges and support needs when managing buyer relationships. For Tomas, he described the visit as “historic”, showing just how important and meaningful these visits are.  

We then continued on the reverse journey back up to Paris, which thankfully only consisted of two trains this time, ready to meet Shared Interest customer Guayapi the following morning.

Guayapi

Guayapi is a French company specialising in superfoods, food supplements and natural cosmetic products, with a strong commitment to biodiversity conservation, sustainable sourcing and analog forestry. 

Analog forestry is a sustainable farming and land restoration approach that recreates biodiversity of a natural forest while also producing crops and generating income for local communities.

The company offers around 80 products under the Guayapi brand, sourced from a variety of plant-based ingredients from regions such as the Brazilian Amazon where they work with the Sateré-Mawé Indigenous people and also from Sri Lanka.

In addition to its own product range, Guayapi distributes products from partners such as Candela Peru, including nut-based oils and other natural products.

Guayapi is also involved in eco-tourism initiatives in Sri Lanka, supporting its broader sustainability and conservation objectives. Visitors can stay on-site, experience the conservation projects firsthand and contribute to these initiatives through donations and other forms of support.

The business experienced a particularly challenging trading period in the past few years, reflecting wider market pressures.

Guayapi's flagship product is Waraná (Guaraná), a traditional Amazonian superfood sourced from the Sateré-Mawé Indigenous people of the Brazilian Amazon, who are recognised as the original custodians and cultivators of the plant. Guayapi has worked with the Sateré-Mawé community since the early 1990s. 

The Sateré-Mawé people are widely known as the "People of Guaraná" and are credited with having domesticated the plant thousands of years ago. They continue to preserve traditional cultivation and processing methods, helping to protect both their cultural heritage and the Amazon ecosystem. 

Guayapi markets Waraná as a natural physical and mental energiser that supports concentration, alertness and performance. The product forms a central part of the company's mission to combine sustainable trade with the preservation of indigenous knowledge and biodiversity.

Shared Interest and Guayapi 

Guayapi purchases Guaraná from the Consortium of Sateré-Mawé Producers (CPSM), which represents the forestry production of the Sateré-Mawé community, which consists of over 17,000 people.  

Founder of the consortium and fair trade campaigner, Obadias Garcia Batista, said:      

“One of our main struggles continues to be the great spaces of the Amazon Rainforest. Our producers are scattered amidst 80 communities along several river tributaries of the Amazon. Therefore, they stay at the mercy of ‘the regatões’ (intermediaries who buy at the lowest price directly from the producers and resell to the industry at a higher price).              

“This is why one of our Fair Trade Principles is that Guayapi advances at least 50% of the harvest amount to the CPSM. This way, we can prepay and secure our producers with a fair price well before the beginning of the harvest. This is what Shared Interest helps us to do.        

“This is why we asked for financial assistance from Shared Interest. It helped us critically for the 2017/2018 harvest. Now, our turnover is starting to increase well again. We hope to have a cleaner cash flow balance for the future harvests. More broadly, thanks to the Fair Trade Agreement with Guayapi, we have been able to give value to our Guaraná, and thus to our culture and territory."