The formal transition period for farms and companies that participated in the UTZ and/or 2017 Rainforest Alliance Certification programs will come to an end on July 1st, 2023. In the past two years, we have introduced some innovations to improve on the foundation laid by the 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard.
The following sections outline different information that Certificate Holders need to know in order to fully transition their information to our new Rainforest Alliance Certification Platform (RACP), which is also our traceability system. Please note that this information is relevant for all crops except palm oil. (Please refer to our Policy on Palm Oil Certification Phase Out).
Account consolidation
We aim to help Certificate Holders consolidate all of their pre-merger accounts for traceability (in MultiTrace) and/or trademarks (in Marketplace) into single accounts managed through the RACP.
If your company had a previous UTZ and/or 2017 Rainforest Alliance traceability account, you are temporarily managing volumes in different MultiTrace accounts. Therefore, we kindly ask you to:
- Ensure that you have an active license to trade in the RACP (e.g., RA_000000000).
- Have a list of all the pre-merger account IDs you wish to close (e.g., ME01_0000).
- Instruct your suppliers to make sales announcements to the account associated with your Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification program license (e.g., RA_000000000).
I have pre-merger MultiTrace accounts for traceability that I want to consolidate
If you have still stock left in your MultiTrace accounts, this stock needs to be moved manually from your MultiTrace account to your RACP account. Please follow the steps below to initiate this process.
- Log in to MultiTrace.
- Close all pending incoming transaction(s) in your “Trade” section.
- Move the volume(s) you have in your stock to your own RACP account (e.g., RA_000000000) by creating a “Sell” transaction from the account(s) you want to close.
Important: In your sell transaction please indicate under “Change of responsibility date” the 31. March 2023. - To learn how to make a sale in the system, please refer to this video or to our Traceability User Guidance Manuals chapter 6 in section 6.A called “Sell” in any of the available languages.
- Check in your “Overview” section if the stock is empty as all remaining volumes need to be redeemed or removed.
- Download a transaction history of the account for your records. To download the file, go to your trade overview tab and click “Download Excel”.
- Log in to your RACP account and confirm the sell transactions you have sent previously from your pre-merger MultiTrace account.
- Reach out to Customer Success at customersuccess@ra.org with your account list of all your account IDs (e.g., ME01_0000) that you want to deactivate.
I have pre-merger Marketplace accounts for trademarks that I want to consolidate
With the RACP registration completed, we offer the option to consolidate one or more pre-merger Marketplace accounts into one account that is accessed through the RACP.
Please note: Consolidating Marketplace accounts will merge information such as Supplier and Clients, Brands, Products, and Type of business.
- If you want your trademarks approvals in one Marketplace account, please email our Customer Success team at customersuccess@ra.org with the ID of your RACP leading account (e.g., RA_000000000) and a list of all pre-merger Marketplace account IDs that you wish to merge (e.g., RA12345), RA12345)
- Online Portal Overview.
To help our partners better understand our platform consolidation, please see the table below.
Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program
Note: All accounts on other platforms related to the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program should be accessed through the account on the Rainforest Alliance Certification Platform (RACP) by accessing the different tabs on the platform.
| RACP | Marketplace 2.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Certification – All crops | Accessed through tab “Certification Overview” | |
| License agreement (2020 version) | Accessed through tab “Legal” | |
| Labeling new seal – All crops* | Accessed through tab “Labeling & Trademarks” | x |
| Traceability – All crops** | Accessed through tab “Traceability”*** |
*From January 1st, 2023, new requests for branded packaging with the legacy Rainforest Alliance trademarks (UTZ logo and legacy Rainforest Alliance Certified seal) can no longer be submitted for approval, as we are phasing out the use of these marks. More information on the phase-out of our legacy trademarks can be found on this page.
**We are currently working to implement traceability for our Nuts program (excluding hazelnuts) and these cannot be traded within our traceability platforms at the moment.
***The traceability tab is only visible once you have obtained a valid license to trade.
If you need further guidance on our systems, please contact our Customer Success team.