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About Cocoa

This section covers the history of cocoa, how cocoa production still uses traditional methods and some of the diseases which threaten its future...more

Sourcing Cocoa

Cocoa production
Cocoa beans come from the pods grown on a cocoa tree. Taking about six months to grow, each pod weighs about 500 grams and contains between 20 and 50 beans...

Where is cocoa produced
Cocoa trees are suited to the warm, moist climate of the Equatorial regions, with over half the world's total grown in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. Around 95% of cocoa is grown in small farms of less than 10 acres...

Harvesting cocoa beans
The harvest process covers several stages vital to the development of a good cocoa flavour, from picking and opening the pods to drying and fermenting the beans and preparing them for sale...
Watch the harvesting cocoa beans video

Diseases that threaten cocoa
There are several major diseases that affect cocoa trees, reducing crops by up to 30%. These include fungi such as Black Pod disease and Witches' Broom, and also the Cocoa Pod Borer moth larvae. Our plant expertise programme is working to propagate more disease resistant and higher yielding cocoa trees...

Cocoa tree varieties
There are four main varieties of cocoa tree: Criollo, Forastero, Trinitario and Nacional. The Forastero varities are the most resistant to disease and pests and now form the biggest group grown in Africa accounting for over 90% of world production...

The history of cocoa
The Mayans were the first to cultivate cocoa in 600 AD in Central America and made a nourishing drink they called "Xocolati" which is where we get the word "Chocolate"...

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