Fair-trade coffee fuelling Škoda employees’ creativity

What does “curiosity fuel” taste like? It’s a blend of coffee beans from India and Tanzania. Coffee lovers working at Škoda plants drink nothing else. What’s more, the residual matter after this coffee is roasted is used in car interiors.

Škoda has been gradually switching to its own coffee since last October. The coffee is called Curiosity Fuel. It aims to fuel employees’ curiosity while they look for sustainable solutions along the entire value chain. It’s intended directly for employees at all the company’s Czech plants. And not just in cups on the table.

The coffee, which the Czech carmaker gets through over 25 tonnes of every year, is grown, roasted and packaged in a way that is nature-friendly and farmer-friendly. This is done with a partner firm called JABLUM, a Czech roasting plant.

Fair-trade coffee

The beans for Curiosity Fuel coffee are grown by family farms. Checks are performed to ensure that people’s demand for a good cup of coffee goes hand in hand with respect for nature and the landscape. After a pilot run, the project has moved on and now conforms to the Rainforest Alliance’s sustainable principles. Thanks to this approach, the Czech carmaker will always pay a fair price to farmers while ensuring that the local environment is respected and local biodiversity is not compromised at the expense of coffee plantations. Another goal is to directly support local communities – the first on the list is an Indian school.

As Petr Nývlt says, an Asian country was the logical choice for supplying coffee to Škoda: “Škoda has plants in India, so it was the preferred country. In addition, we were able to find farmers in India who have high-quality coffee and are able to meet our requirements for processing coffee on the farm. Rainforest Alliance certification helps us to apply and maintain these requirements and standards.” 

Several other aspects develop the sustainability of the whole coffee consumption process. Buying directly from farmers and bypassing traders or wholesalers, for example, means that the distance the coffee is transported is significantly reduced. It does not travel from one warehouse to another, but goes directly from the farm to the roasting plant in Mladá Boleslav.​​

Sustainable roasting

The JABLUM roasting plant supplies two coffees to the Czech carmaker. Curiosity Fuel is an 80:20 blend of Arabica and Robusta. The predominant Indian Arabica gives the coffee a pleasantly strong body with a subtle chocolatey, bitter taste. The Robusta makes the coffee perfect for milk drinks like cappuccino or latte. One new development is that the cafés in the plant also receive 100% Arabica from the same plantations in India. Pure Arabica has a flavour profile with minimal acidity and also has naturally less caffeine compared to Robusta.

At the roasting plant, Curiosity Fuel coffee is packaged in 100% recyclable packaging that is made in the European Union. After use, the packaging can then go for recycling and further exploitation via yellow waste bins. In addition, the family-owned roastery boasts that it uses the latest American LORING technology to roast its coffee. These machines register energy savings of up to eighty percent compared to conventional roasters and lower greenhouse gas emissions with each roast. What’s more, the company uses two other hot-air roasters designed especially for smaller batches of select coffees.​​

Coffee in seats?

Check out our new car offers​

Search our Approved used cars​

Intertested in Electriic and Hybrid vehicles