We are moving to new premises over the Christmas period and to avoid any disruption to our customers we won't be processing any orders that come in over the holdiay period until Monday the 4th of January.

We will endeavour to respond to emails and telephone messages during the holiday period.

Our new contact details from Monday the 4th of January are:

NEW phone number is 0191 2705116

NEW fax number is 0191 2660489

The NEW address is:

SIMPLYFAIR
Newcastle Business Village
33 Bellingham Drive
North Tyne Industrial Estate
Benton
Newcastle
NE12 9SZ

Yes - we're giving one of our Simplyfair - Fairtrade Tea For Two Hampers away each week from now till the 17th of December. That's 3 hampers up for grabs.

Every order placed each week up until midnight on Thursday over £25 will entered, so the more gifts you buy the more chances you have of winning.

All orders placed up until the dates/times below over £25 will be entered into each weekly draw.

WEEK 1 - midnight 3rd December 2009
WEEK 2 - midnight 10th December 2009
WEEK 3 - midnight 17th December 2009

Winners will be notified by email and will be able to chose a Gift Card message and have the option of the gift being sent to someone else!

FREE caddy with all orders - just add one (or both) to your basket during checkout and we will include them in your parcel.

If you don't add it to your order we will assume you don't want one - but who wouldn't!! You can add one of each every time you place your order so you can share them with your friends & family or have them all over your workplace!!

Limited numbers so only whilst stock lasts - therefore hurry and don't be disapointed!

World Fairtrade Day May 9th 2009

World Fair Trade Day

Saturday 9 May is the seventh annual World Fair Trade Day, when the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO, formerly IFAT) and its members promote global awareness of fair trade. The second Saturday of May every year is a great opportunity to celebrate the 100% fair trade organisations and companies, known as Alternative Trading Organisations (ATOs).

Join with fair trade supporters around the world by holding a 100% fair trade breakfast - there'll be breakfasts held in France, Norway, Poland, the United States and here in the UK. You could also use this as an opportunity to encourage your local European Parliamentary candidates to sign our pledge for fair trade, in advance of the European Elections on 4 June.

Ecover News

Extremely powerful, supremely ecological!

After 7 years of dedicated research and development, over 29 man years, Ecover has taken the next step in its pioneering journey to improve the efficacy and minimise the impact of its ecological cleaning products. This spring Ecover unveils the new EcoSurfactants - but why is this so revolutionary?

Surfactants are responsible for breaking down the water tension between your clothes and the water to allow the cleaning action to happen; you could call them the workhorses of the cleaning brigade. As you know many other cleaning brands use petrochemical derived surfactants in their product which are not biodegradable or obtained from sustainable sources.

Ecover replaced these petrochemical ingredients with plant-based alternatives allowing their products to be biodegradable and less damaging to the environment. That said the surfactants were still produced in a chemical process which they strived to improve - and they have with the ECO-SURFACTANT.

The new EcoSurfactants perform better than the sugar derived surfactants they used to use and when tested against leading brands we are on par if not better - so the cleaning power of the new EcoSurfactant range works much better than before. Better still, this increased efficacy is brought to you by a product which has an even lower energy production process and improved ecological credentials. The raw ingredients - oil, yeast and sugar - are sourced in Europe which is much closer to the factory than the previous ingredients which were from Asia, which has reduced the 'food miles' of the range.

After all the years of investment and research we are pleased in introduce their brand new range of cleaning products with pioneering EcoSurfactant technology: All Purpose Cleaner, Multi-Surface Cleaner Spray, Power Cleaner and Glass Cleaner.

Their journey is not yet over. On the contrary, the launch of the EcoSurfactants has in many ways raised the bar and their R&D team are already exploring possibilities of using this technology in the laundry and dishwashing products - and things are looking promising.......

27/04/09

Protx Changes name to SAGEPAY

As a business trading online, we take internet fraud very seriously and wanted to take this opportunity to reassure you of our security measures.

It is our responsibility to ensure that your card details are not compromised while shopping with us and as such we have chosen to work with leading payment services provider Protx.

Protx provides a secure payment gateway (Level 1 PCI DSS), processing payments for over 24,000 online businesses, including ours. You may have noticed the Protx logo - a recognised mark of security - on our website and payment pages, where you enter your card details.

Protx has recently informed us that from 21 April 2009 it is to change its name to Sage Pay and we wanted to make sure that, as a valued customer, you are aware of this change.

The switch to Sage Pay is a strategic move by the company, which is owned by business management software provider Sage, and services will not be affected in any way. In fact Protx, (Sage Pay) is introducing 24/7 support from 21 April 2009, making them even more accessible should we, or you need to contact them.

From a day-to-day perspective there will be no difference to the service, but we wanted to assure you of our continued commitment to security on our site by making you aware of Protx and the subsequent rebrand to Sage Pay.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on 0191 414 2001.

20/04/09

February News

Traidcraft
This year is not only Traidcraft's 30th anniversary, it's also 10 years since the launch of Geobar, now well established as one of the fastest growing Fairtrade products. Last year, sales of Geobar grew by over 20% and more than one million homes & businesses across the UK regularly buy Geobars.

It was the world's first composite fairtrade product and it has paved the way for thousands of others - everything from cakes to cookies through to ice-cream and jams.

Geobars
To celebrate this 10-year milestone, the entire Geobar range has been given a re-vamp including improved recipes, new pack designs and even more fairtrade ingredients, including fairtrade rice crispies made from Indian rice.

So what difference has Geobar made over the 10 years? A lot, according to Chino Henriques, the General Manager of the Apicoop Beekeepers' cooperative in Chile.

"It's a fantastic success story for Fairtrade," he says. "Behind those sales of Geobars lies practical change in the livelihoods of hundreds of families of our beekeepers. It has made education possible and has enabled us to pay for new equipment and to build a sustainable business".

It has also made a significant difference to the farmers of Eksteenskuil Agricultural Association, who supply the dried fruit used in the Geobars. From being a group of disparate and marginalised individual farmers, they have grown into a thriving co-operative.

So no matter how you look at it the Geobar has been an outstanding success both as a flagship Fairtrade product and as a tool to deliver sustainable development for producers and their communities.

Credit Crunch hits poor hardest
The global economic downturn is having an impact on us all, prompting us to make difficult decisions about how we spend our money in the uncertain context of a recession.

With so many competing pressures, some of us have no choice but to cut back on our spending and one area that is particularly affected is our charitable giving. In fact, many charities are already feeling the impact of donors withdrawing regular donations in response to the recession.

However hard it seems for us here in the UK, it is even harder for the poor producers in Africa and Asia, who charities like Traidcraft Exchange work with, to help them trade their way out of poverty.

The credit crunch in micro-finance has severely impacted small traders and agriculturists. They have received less than half of the loans they usually need at this time of year and as a consequence they have not been able to buy sufficient quantity and variety of products, resulting in lost income. Farmers have not been able to borrow money to buy seeds, threatening their very source of future income and worse still many are forced to go back to the unscrupulous money lenders, from whose clutches they had escaped not so long ago.

Continuing to help charities like Traidcraft Exchange really will make a significant difference to the producers during these very difficult times for all of us. More information about what Traidcraft Exchange does and how you can help can be found at Traidcraft

If you would like to make a donation, whether it's a one off gift or a regular direct debit you can find out all you need to know by following the link above.

Global Economic Crisis and our prices
The current global economy has created a number of pressures on prices. The credit crunch, food price inflation averaging 10% during 2008 and the dramatic changes in the currency exchange rates which affect our suppliers when importing goods to the UK.

All of this means that for some products our suppliers have had to increase their prices. We recognise that times are hard for everyone and have absorbed the increase where we can and in addition have even reduced many lines to enable our customers to continue to enjoy the yummy goodies we source.