Partner Article

Ethical welcome for Thandi

A North East ethical retailer received a special visitor to its premises when a world-famous fairtrade winemaker paid a visit to its Ouseburn headquarters.

Vernon Henn, general manager of Thandi wines in South Africa, became the world’s first winemaker to achieve fairtrade accreditation in 2003. He was on a whistlestop visit to the UK during Fairtrade Fortnight, but insisted that he wanted to make the special trip to the North East to view the operations at Ethicalsuperstore.com.

Vernon said: “This is my actually my first trip to the UK and I am delighted to have the chance to visit the North East of England, I have been given a great welcome. Our UK distributors have always kept me informed about Ethicalsuperstore.com and as soon as I knew I would be in the UK I requested a visit to see their operations. “We work very hard to ensure that producing our wine benefits our local communities in South Africa. I especially wanted to meet with Ethicalsuperstore.com to thank them for the support they have given us.”

Ethicalsuperstore.com has been supplying Thandi wines since last September and has seen sales soar, with it currently standing as one of its most popular wines on the site.

Claire Malone, a senior manager at Ethicalsuperstore.com said: “We were obviously thrilled to learn of Vernon’s desire to come and visit us. Thandi wines are one of the forerunners of the fair-trade wine movement and, so its great that he was keen to see firsthand how successful his wines have been on our website.

Thandi wines were first established in South Africa in 1995 with its aim to empower previously disadvantaged farming communities.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .