Turqle Trading: Doughnut Design Case Study

01 | Brief Summary and Key Facts

Turqle is a sustainable fair trade enterprise that connects producers and customers through high-quality products, transparent business practices, and trust-based relationships.

• Location: Cape Town, South Africa
• Founded: 1997
• Size (turnover, employees): ± R7mil pa; 5 direct employees; 860 people growing or working in supplying the business
• Sector: Fair Trade Food
• Legal form: CC (closed corporation)
• Website: www.turQle.com
• Main products/services: Long life sauces, condiments, spices and salt.

Highlight of their unique approach

Turqle supports growers, artisans and communities in South Africa - particularly food producers - to achieve greater incomes and social development. It has long-term and committed partnerships with growers and suppliers across South Africa. 

Highlight of their unique design

Turqle practices Fair Trade in everything it does, including through long-term supplier partnerships, setting prices to support Fair Trade practices, and paying a portion of the contract up-front. It also reinvests its profits to support its mission, and sets aside 2.5% of annual turnover (not profit) for the Fair Trade Trust. They also commit 25% of management time to support the expansion of Fair Trade globally. 

02 | Founding Story

Before starting Turqle, its founders, Pieter Swart and Rain Morgan, worked for Alternative Trade Organisations that focussed on artisan craft and trading with compassionate customers. They observed a common challenge: the producer organizations were in perpetual financial trouble and relied almost entirely on donor funding for survival. 

Based on that experience, they decided that Turqle would be self-sustaining (at a minimum), make a modest profit, and never (if they ever had shareholders), prioritise shareholder profit over the interests of the producers or the employees.

It was (and remains) important to the founders that they made an ongoing constructive contribution to fair trade -- whether this involved supporting other local fair trade enterprises, or other organisations with similar core values, or the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO). 

03 | Industry Context

Around the world, food production is associated with hunger and poverty. Smallholder farmers typically earn below what is needed to meet their basic needs and workers on larger farms (often called plantations) are often trapped in precarious work and low wages. Global supply chains usually have standardised exploitative contractual terms that pay low prices and delay payments.

In the face of this, the Fair Trade movement has generated an alternative model of trading –  one that applies Fair Trade practices and aims to achieve respect for human rights for workers, farmers, artisans and communities. There has been a growth of ethical consumers and campaigners who have championed Fair Trade –  instigating growing demand for Fair Trade products across Europe, UK, North America and beyond. Turqle has been among the most committed and ambitious practitioners and advocates of Fair Trade for many years.

Alongside conducting Fair Trade practices in its supply chain, Turqle also works effectively with all customers including importers, distributors, retailers, and the consumers who buy directly from Turqle online. As the founders of Turqle put it:

“People trust you enough to eat what you make and feed it to their families and friends. Being in the realm of Fair Trade adds another dimension –  buyers trust us to not only provide safe and delicious food products, they also trust us to manage the Fair Trade commitments, not only for ourselves, but for the people we work with. In short, being a fair food trader means there are a number of multi-dimensional trust relationships. And of course, at the end of it all, it must taste good, be good for the consumer, the people who made it, and the planet.”

04 | Regenerative & Distributive Strategies and Ambitions

At the core of Turqle’s approach is a commitment to empowering the people who grow their ingredients and products. Fair Trade shapes every relationship that Turqle has, including its own employees, suppliers, customers and the broader communities it touches. Turqle’s approach includes setting fair prices with suppliers, and working with suppliers to help them pay their workers a local living wage. 

In contrast to usual trading practices where suppliers typically get paid many weeks or months after the product has been delivered (leading to financial stress for suppliers and farmers), Turqle offers to pay at least 50% of the price up front before the order is delivered. It also commits to long-term partnerships with its suppliers, providing both support and stability in its trading relationships.

In addition, Turqle closely engages its suppliers to ensure that there is no child labour, no forced labour, no gender discrimination, freedom of association for workers, and good working conditions overall. 

Aside from the social and ecological commitments and the practices to foster these, Turqle takes a very direct and grower-oriented approach to food production. In the words of Turqle’s founders:

“All our sauces are made with real vegetables, by real (fairly paid) people. Some of the sauces are made where the chillies are grown by the people who grew them. All the spices are blended by people who really know what they’re doing and there are no additives allowed. The salt we use is harvested and sorted by people – some of it is even hand harvested. Between being sieved out of the pans, being dried by the sun and wind and being packed for sale, very little happens, so it reaches the consumer the way it was made - each crystal pure, perfect and complete with all the natural sea minerals.”

Turqle is also working to minimise packaging, working with its buyers to reduce single use and non-biodegradable packing. In some cases (where they have cooperative customers), they manage to get the packs 90%+ compostable or recyclable.

The struggle for sustainable packaging is on-going: “Just as we ‘win’ one corner, the previous one collapses - so the needle barely moves at all. Most local manufacturers simply do not find value in sustainable packaging, and because the consumers demand cheaper (rather than ‘better’), this tar-pit is very sticky.”

Turqle has also empowered its own employees to take over elements of their business. In 2020 they decided to give rights to sell the products in the local South African market to three of their employees to operate as their own business. Meanwhile, Turqle focuses on the export market.

05 | How the Deep Design Enables Strategy and Action

Turqle is designed around the 10 principles of Fair Trade. This is embedded in its purpose and it practices Fair Trade in everything it does, including through long-term supplier partnerships, setting prices to support Fair Trade practices, and paying a portion of the contract up-front. Fair Trade is also central to its governance and the way its co-founders (owners) are deeply rooted in the global Fair Trade movement. 

They also commit 25% of management time to support the expansion of Fair Trade globally. This includes its founders volunteering as a representative of the trading partners of El Puente on El Puente’s board, supporting the World Fair Trade Organization in running its fair payment system, and leading the Guarantee System Committee.

Turqle is a Guaranteed Fair Trade Enterprise, verified by the World Fair Trade Organization. This verifies that it implements the 10 principles of Fair Trade across all its operations and supply chains. It has also been verified by People and Planet First as a social enterprise.

Its financial terms in contracts and reinvestment of profits also means that Fair Trade is central to the Finance layer of its enterprise design. Turqle reinvests its profits to support its  mission, and sets aside 2.5% of annual turnover (not profit) for Fair Trade Trust. 

The aim of the trust is to help young South Africans complete their education and participate in the job market. The trust has three focus areas: 1) covering school fees so young people stay in school; 2) providing on the job training to increase economic mobility; and 3) partial scholarships for tertiary education for workers and their children.  Over the past 20+ years, the trust has helped thousands of people become more economically self-sufficient.

06 | Reflections and Lessons for Other Businesses

Fair Trade is not just about the specifics of trading relationships and conditions for workers and farmers. It is also a set of principles that can shape the deep design of any business. The 200+ businesses in the World Fair Trade Organization community are all examples of designing a business to pursue the principles of Fair Trade – shaping the governance and financial model behind the business, alongside the long-term and purpose-led trading relationships that underpin the model.

This case study was researched and written by Rain Morgan and Pieter Swart of Turqle Trading, and Erinch Sahan of DEAL.