We are a specialty trading house. We do three things: we import premium food and beverage products into South Africa and place them with retail and hospitality buyers; we help South African producers reach international buyers, particularly in the Gulf and across Africa; and we provide market-entry advisory to producers and companies moving in either direction.

What we are not is a freight forwarder, a commodity broker, or a catalogue. We carry a deliberately small number of products and we can account for every one of them.

It depends on the product, and we will tell you which arrangement applies before any commitment is made.

For most import relationships we operate as a distributor — we take title to the goods, carry the inventory risk, and sell on to our own buyer network.

For export facilitation we more often work as an agent, connecting a South African producer with an international buyer and earning a commission on concluded business rather than taking title.

For market-entry work we operate on a fee basis — a retainer or a success-linked structure agreed in advance.

Mixing these without saying so is a common source of friction in this industry. We would rather be explicit at the outset.

Terra Vero is a young company. We are candid about that because you will find out anyway, and because we think the more useful question is what stands behind the business rather than how many years are on the registration certificate.

What stands behind it is a documented evaluation methodology, direct producer relationships at origin, working knowledge of South African import and export compliance, and a founder with a background in business strategy and cross-border trade development.

If you need a supplier with two decades of shipping history, we are not that company yet. If you want a partner who will do the origin work properly and tell you the truth about what they find, we are worth a conversation.

We are headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa.

We currently work four trade corridors: South Africa into the Gulf (premium wine, citrus, avocados, artisan food); East Africa into South Africa (specialty coffee from Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya); South Africa into West Africa and Europe (wine and artisan products, including under AfCFTA preferential terms); and Latin America into South Africa (cacao, coffee and specialty FMCG).

We do not claim coverage we do not have. If your market falls outside these corridors, say so in your first message and we will tell you honestly whether we can help or whether you would be better served elsewhere.

Email info@terravero.trade with your producer profile (location, history, annual production volume, existing markets), product specification (variety or cultivar, processing method, harvest date or vintage, volume available), pricing (farmgate or ex-works, FOB if you have it, payment terms) and any documentation you hold — certifications, lab reports, previous cupping or tasting scores, export licences.

We will respond within five working days telling you whether the product fits one of our corridors. If it does, we will request two to three representative samples.

We do not need a polished presentation. We need accurate information.

Nothing. We do not charge producers to be evaluated.

The evaluation is how we decide what to carry, so the cost sits with us. You are responsible only for getting samples to us — sample freight is on the producer, which is standard practice across the trade.

The exception is our advisory service, which is a separate paid engagement. If you are seeking market-entry consulting rather than asking us to consider your product for the portfolio, that is a fee-based relationship and we will quote it before starting.

From receipt of samples, allow three weeks.

That covers sensory evaluation — formal cupping under SCA protocols for coffee, blind tasting against destination-market benchmarks for wine, blind comparison for artisan food — followed by scoring across the five Origin Index dimensions and a written justification for each score.

At the end you receive one of three outcomes. Include (75+ composite, no dimension below 10/20) means we proceed to commercial terms. Watchlist (60–74) means we tell you which dimensions fell short and what would need to change, with re-evaluation in six to twelve months. Decline (below 60) means we tell you why, briefly and constructively.

We share the evaluation summary with producers in all three cases.

Sometimes, and never by default.

Where we take on a product that requires meaningful investment from us — market development, regulatory clearance, brand-building in a new territory — we will usually ask for exclusive distribution rights in that territory only, for a defined term with renewal options. You remain free to sell everywhere else.

Where we act as an agent introducing you to buyers, exclusivity is generally unnecessary and we will not ask for it.

We will never ask for global exclusivity. Any trading company that does, at our stage, is asking you to bet your business on theirs.

No, provided you scored 60 or above.

A Watchlist result means the product did not qualify at this time, and we will have told you precisely which of the five dimensions cost you the points. In our experience the most common shortfalls are Supply Reliability — a producer who has never exported at commercial volume — and Production Ethics documentation, where the practice is sound but nothing is written down.

Both are fixable. Neither is a judgement on the product itself. Come back when the gap has been addressed and we will re-evaluate. We keep the original scoring on file so the comparison is meaningful.

Our portfolio is small and growing, and we would rather tell you what is genuinely available than publish a catalogue we cannot fulfil.

Our active focus is single-origin specialty coffee from East Africa, premium South African wine for export, and specialty FMCG across the Gulf and Latin American corridors.

Email imports@terravero.trade or exports@terravero.trade with the category you are looking for and we will tell you what we have, what we have in evaluation, and what we could source to specification. If we do not have it, we will say so rather than sell you something adjacent.

This varies by product and category. We would rather discuss your actual volume than turn you away on a published threshold.

We work with a deliberately wide range of buyers — from independent roasteries taking 100kg a month to hospitality groups placing quarterly orders.

If your volume is genuinely too small to make a shipment work, we will tell you directly and, where we can, point you to someone better suited.

Yes, and we would encourage it. We do not expect anyone to buy specialty product unseen.

For coffee we supply roast samples and, on request, green samples for your own cupping. For wine we supply bottle samples. For FMCG we supply retail units.

Samples are charged and credited against your first order.

Where we act as distributor into South Africa, we are the importer of record. We handle customs clearance, import permits, labelling compliance, phytosanitary documentation where required, and duty. You buy from us domestically, in rand, against a local invoice. That is the point of using us.

Where we act as an export agent, the buyer in the destination market is normally the importer of record and carries those obligations. We support the process — documentation, certification, coordination with your clearing agent — but we do not assume the legal role unless it is specifically agreed.

We will always confirm in writing which arrangement applies before an order is placed.

It is our internal evaluation framework. Every product is scored out of 20 across five dimensions — Terroir Authenticity, Production Ethics, Flavour Distinction, Market Novelty and Supply Reliability — for a composite out of 100. A product needs 75 to enter the portfolio, and at least 10 out of 20 on every dimension regardless of total.

For a buyer, the practical value is that we can tell you not just that we recommend something, but exactly where it is strongest and where it is weakest. If a coffee scored 84 with supply reliability as the soft spot, you will know that, and you will know we are monitoring batch consistency across the first two shipments because of it.

We should be equally clear about the limits: the Index is not objective. A trained evaluator applying a written rubric is still exercising judgement. What the framework does is constrain that judgement, document it, and make us accountable for it.

Yes. We share the dimension scores, the composite, and the written justification for each score with any buyer purchasing that product.

The full methodology — the scoring rubrics, the category-specific evaluation guidance, the process documentation — is proprietary, but we make it available to trade partners on request under a confidentiality arrangement.

The scores shown on our website are labelled illustrative because they demonstrate how an evaluation is presented rather than reporting on a specific product. We would rather label a demonstration honestly than let it be mistaken for a claim.