Sustainable Spice Initiative
From farmers across Bangka and Lampung, traceable to the plot it came from.
Public recordAugust 2026PT Cinquer Agro Nusantara appointed holding operator by Indonesia’s MSME ministry
Bangka Belitung Province
The White Gold of Bangka — GI-protected and prized on global markets for its clean, biting heat and complex earthy character with subtle musky depth.
Lampung Province
Exported across the world since the 16th century — profound pungency with warm, woodsy and slightly smoky undertones. The backbone of the global pepper trade.
A supply chain should be able to tell you who grew your food. Ours records every transfer from the plot in Bangka to the finished pack — and the code on that pack opens the whole record, back to the farmer.
01Farm
Every plot is mapped and every farmer registered before we buy a single berry. Harvest is logged where it happens — so a batch has a location and a date before it has a price.
02Purchasing
Fresh weight, moisture and grade are read at the Spice Hub in front of the person who grew it, and the price is paid against that reading. No roadside collector, no anonymous middle.
03QC
Piperine, volatile oil, moisture and defect count, measured on our own FTIR and GC-MS. The batch is matched to a buyer’s spec before it is processed — not after it is rejected.
04Production
Retting or blanching, drying, sterilising, extraction, packing — each step writes to the same lot. A finished pack can still name the plots that filled it.
05Distribution
Container seal, phytosanitary and origin certificates, the port and the date. Chain of custody unbroken from the hub to the buyer’s door — and one company’s name on both ends of it: the exporter on your bill of lading is the one that registered the farmers.
06End Consumer
One code on the pack opens the whole record — every reading above, in order. And the scan travels back: which farmers grew it, which practices earned the premium, what to pay for next season.
From farm development to finished ingredient, each stage is built on the work before it.
We started as trainers, not gate buyers. Since 2014, our programmes have built farmer capability in agronomy, geodata, financing and agroforestry design — strengthening the way pepper is grown at source.
Field knowledge carries into specialised labs for extraction, phytochemistry, formulation and analytical testing. Supercritical Fluid Extraction, fractionation and spray drying turn raw material into essential oil.
That work reaches global food, health and wellness brands through custom formulations and digital traceability that connects buyers back to farmers — alongside our own retail label, Bukara.
Not one of these was a trade deal. Every programme built farmer capability — agronomy, market access, geodata, finance, agroforestry design — alongside the institutions that funded them.
Bangka Belitung & Lampung
GIZ-supported climate-smart agroforestry — over 1,300 farmers and 10 Spice Hubs, integrating pepper, nilam and coffee.
Bangka
Increase the productivity of Bangka pepper farmers by improving access to business capital while safeguarding product quality and sustainability.
WithVerstegen · Rabobank Foundation · AgriTerra
Bangka
Co-create self-sustaining white pepper agroforestry systems with farmers in Bangka that combine pepper, support trees, and fruit trees for ecological and economic resilience.
WithVerstegen · Preta Terra · ReNature · One Tree Planted
Indonesia
Improving food security through the utilization of satellite data for smallholder pepper farmers.
WithVerstegen · NSO · ICCO · VanderSat · Akvo · Nelen & Schuurman · Balittro · IPB
Bangka
Adjustment of pepper supply chain standards to European markets
WithVerstegen · GIZ
West Bangka
Improving Muntok White Pepper Productivity
WithVerstegen · IDH · SSI · Cordaid · Hivos
Samples, spec sheets and a traceable quote for your next container.
On the record elsewhere
