Turnhout, 18 June 2015
Miko is thrilled to announce Pristimantis puruscafeum, a new species of frog discovered within the Puro Coffee Rainforest Reserve in Ecuador and named in honour of the Puro brand.
EcoMinga, the Ecuadorian partner of international conservation charity World Land Trust (WLT), organised the scientific naming process in recognition of Puro’s ongoing support and due to the uncanny similarities in colours and patterns on the frog to that of a coffee bean. Since its launch in 2006, Miko has pledged 2 % of Puro sales to WLT and it is through this partnership that 75 million m2 of rainforest has been saved to date, within 7 Puro Coffee Rainforest Reserves that span 6 coffee producing countries.
It was during the making of a new series of Puro Rainforest films that the news of the frog and its name was announced to Miko. Fortunately, Juan Pablo Reyes, herpetologist and discoverer of the frog, managed to locate both a male and female specimen, enabling them to be captured on film for the Puro Ecuadorian edition.
In 2011, an orchid was named Teagueia puroana also after Puro, by Lou Jost, founder of EcoMinga. Lou stated that “the Puro reserve is proving to be a real treasure-trove of biodiversity” and this is certainly proving to be the case, with many new species previously unknown to science being discovered every year.
For centuries the scientific naming of species has traditionally been used to recognise contributions to biology. “Miko is overjoyed to have both their Puro Fairtrade brand and worldwide client base, whose purchases make this all possible, honoured in such a way by the WLT and community of scientists”, says Frans Van Tilborg, Miko Group CEO.
A 3 minute short version of the Ecuadorian Rainforest film can be seen at www.vimeo.com/fairtradecoffee/purospecies
ABOUT MIKO
Miko has been active in coffee service for over 200 years and in plastic packaging for some 40 years now, and was floated on Euronext Brussels in 1998. Miko follows a “two-pillar strategy” in which its core activities – coffee service and plastic packaging – are practically independent entities with their own management, so that each activity can follow its own growth path. The group employs 909 people and achieved a turnover of EUR 160 million in 2014. The coffee service division accounted for 52.8 % of this total. The remaining 47.2 % was achieved by the plastic packaging division. Miko is an international group with companies in Belgium, France, UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Australia.
