‘Nemi Teas started in the Syrian refugee crisis about eight years ago in London. Our founder was working in finance and he was at a dinner one evening and he sat next to a group of Syrian refugees who back home were all doctors, lawyers, white collar professionals,’ explains Johansen. ‘They’d just got their refugee status but didn’t have jobs. People wouldn’t hire them because they had no UK experience or references.’
The founder came up with the idea of starting a business selling chai on Camden Market in London, hiring refugees, and giving them a reference when they left for pastures new. Nemi Teas has come a long way since then. ‘At the start we employed refugees in our warehouses where they packed teas into retail tubes, labelled them and would ship them out,’ says Johansen.
‘And now we’ve branched into employing refugees at refugee run cafes where they learn all about hospitality, they get to interact with people every day, practise their English, really gain confidence and skills. And when they’re then ready, through our network of food service clients, we help them into their next job in the sector.’
So why tea? And what’s special about the teas Nemi sells? ‘Here in the UK, tea is a universal way to have conversations,’ says Johansen. And the teas show a commitment to the environment. ‘Our flagship brand Nemi uses organic teas. We have a more mainstream line called Trampoline, which has two types of teas. One is Rainforest alliance and one is Fair Trade. The certifications ensure that the teas are made with a certain rigour in terms of environmental accountability and human accountability. We then package our teas in plastic free packaging. So all of our packaging is compostable.’
At the moment, Nemi Teas follows a business-to-business model so they aren’t available in mainstream supermarkets. ‘But we are eyeing up retail on the horizon,’ says Johansen.
‘We also plan on opening more cafes and we’re looking at franchise models where we can expand our footprint quickly and increase the amount of impact we can create.’ And that impact is twofold: ‘Our teas are better teas for a better future. And that future can be interpreted as either environmental or societal because they both look after the environment and help refugees to integrate and become really productive members of society.’
