The harvest of the cocoa pods
As soon as the longish cocoa pod is ripe, it is cut off from the tree and separated. The cocoa beans are removed and collected on banana leaves. In the leaves, the beans ferment for up to six days, which mainly contributes to the aroma. The beans are then dried in the sun for about ten days.
After the beans have been dried, they are controlled by the Ghanaian cocoa authority COCOBOD. After a successful quality control COCOBOD pays the organic cooperative Yayra Glover (Yayra Glover has the license and permission to buy cocoa beans from cocoa farmers) the farme gate price plus a margin of 702 cedis/tonne (about 130 Euro). This margin is renegotiated every year.
Afterwards, Niche Cocoa Industry buys our beans from COCOBOD. In addition to the purchase price of the beans, a premium of $600/tonne is paid. This allows an additional income of 45 cedis/bag (approx. 10%) for the cocoa farmers* of our organic cooperative Yayra Glover.
The rest of the bonus is invested in organic certifications, training and education of trainers. After the purchase of beans, the beans are transported by truck to the Niche Cocoa factory.
The cocoa mass is mixed with cocoa butter and ingredients such as sugar and milk powder (all ingredients are organic and fair) for further chocolate production and then rolled (in a 2 and 5 rolling mill). This process ensures that the particle size of sugar and the remaining ingredients is constantly reduced.
The coarse-grained mass is thus turned into a fine chocolate mass by the subsequent rolling process. The mass is then conched for many hours. Finally, the chocolate is tempered using a temperature curve, which makes the chocolate more durable.
After having poured the mass into moulds, the bars are placed in a cooling tower and are then knocked out of the moulds and inserted into the packaging machine. Finally, the chocolates are packed by hand in cartons.
The chocolate is ready – and now?
Now the chocolate is shipped to Hamburg in refrigerated containers. From Hamburg the chocolates heads to Munich, where our office and warehouse are located. Here we pack your orders diligently and ship them all over the world. You can find shops where you can buy our chocolates in our Store Locator.
