What is the UTZ label and is it still relevant?

UTZ was a Dutch agricultural sustainability label founded in 1997, specialising in coffee, cocoa and tea. In 2018, UTZ merged with Rainforest Alliance to create a unified new Rainforest Alliance label, active since 2020. The UTZ label as such no longer exists — but its standards and database of certified farms have been integrated into the Rainforest Alliance 2020 framework.

UTZ (a Mayan word meaning 'good') was founded in the Netherlands in 1997 at the initiative of a Guatemalan coffee importer. Its model was based on a detailed Code of Conduct covering agricultural practices, working conditions, environmental protection and traceability — with a realistic, progressive rather than absolutist approach. UTZ certified approximately 5% of global coffee production at the time of the merger.

The 2018 merger with Rainforest Alliance, commercially effective in 2020, created a considerable communication challenge: two recognised labels with different strengths — Rainforest Alliance strong on biodiversity and tropical forests, UTZ strong on agricultural traceability and social conditions — had to align their frameworks into a common standard. The new Rainforest Alliance 2020 adopts a score-based rather than binary compliance approach, which is more nuanced but harder to communicate to consumers.

The relevance of the new Rainforest Alliance label in 2026 is debated within the specialty coffee community. On one hand, it is the most widespread sustainability label in the mass consumer coffee market (covering billions of cups sold annually), giving it significant systemic impact. On the other, its standards are judged insufficient by specialty coffee actors who prefer direct trade, relationship coffee or organic certification, considered more rigorous and transparent.

In practice, a Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee guarantees a minimum level of good agricultural and social practices, but does not guarantee cup quality, farm-level traceability or prices above the C market characteristic of specialty coffee. For Belgian consumers, it is an acceptable sustainability indicator for everyday supermarket coffee, but insufficient as the sole criterion for specialty coffee enthusiasts.

Comparison of coffee sustainability labels

What happened when UTZ merged with Rainforest Alliance

UTZ's 2018 merger with Rainforest Alliance created the world's largest agricultural sustainability certification programme by certified land area, covering over 6 million farms across dozens of commodities including coffee, cocoa and tea. The merger rationale was straightforward: both organisations shared broadly compatible principles (good agricultural practices, worker welfare, environmental protection) and were competing for the same certification budgets from large food companies. A merger eliminated redundancy, reduced costs for certified farms and companies, and created a single label with higher consumer recognition potential than either could achieve separately.

For coffee specifically, the merged programme retained the green frog seal as its consumer-facing icon and aligned standards around the new Rainforest Alliance Farm Sustainability Assessment. UTZ-certified farms that were already largely compliant with Rainforest Alliance standards moved relatively smoothly into the merged framework. Some farms and companies that had specifically preferred UTZ for its more farm-income-focused approach felt that the merger shifted emphasis slightly toward environmental protection at the expense of the livelihood components that UTZ had prioritised — a tension that emerged in early implementation feedback published in the merger's public documentation.

Going deeper

From a consumer perspective, the UTZ label no longer exists as a separate certification: all UTZ-certified products now carry the Rainforest Alliance seal or are in transition. Products bearing the old UTZ seal that remain in retail distribution are certified under the same underlying standard as Rainforest Alliance-labelled products. The historical UTZ label is still occasionally visible on older stock but is not being issued on new certifications. For specialty coffee consumers who were familiar with UTZ as a specific standard and curious about its current status, the practical answer is that its requirements have been absorbed into the merged Rainforest Alliance standard — which is more comprehensive in environmental scope and somewhat diluted in the specific livelihood components that made UTZ distinctive.