The Cocoa Story
Read about the cocoa growing process: how it is harvested, sold and shipped to chocolate factories.
Seedlings
Put cocoa beans into the soil and in time you’ll get cocoa seedlings. When these are ready, plant them out on the cocoa farm. They need heavy shade at the start. So you can grow other crops around them. Like maize, or cassava, for example.
Cocoa Tree
After 3 to 5 years, the seedling has grown into a cacao tree that is ready to give fruit. Little green pods start to grow on the trunk and branches. They can grow up to 30 cm long and turn yellow or red.
Cutting the pods
When the pods are ripe, cut them down. Take care, for the trees are easily damaged.
Breaking the pods
Break the pods open. Inside, you’ll find around 25 to 30 pinkish seeds, in a mushy pulp. These are the cocoa beans, which will go to make chocolate. You can let the rest rot to use as fertiliser.
Inside a pod
About 25 beans – or 1 pod – will be needed for two 49g bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate.
Pods in banana leaves
Collect all the beans and pulp, cover them with banana leaves, and leave them to ferment for a week or so (turn them every two days). Fermenting stops the beans sprouting, and lets their taste develop.
Beans dry on a table
By now the beans have turned brown. Spread them out on bamboo tables, to dry in the sun. If you don’t dry them properly, they’ll go mouldy later. You will need to rake through them to make sure they all dry.
At the village buying table
Now the beans are ready to sell. Bring them to the buying shed in the village.
Checking the quality
Here, an agent from a Licensed Buying Company will inspect them, weigh them and pay you the price set by the government.
The Cocoa Board
The Licensed Buying Company agents take the beans to the larger district buying sheds, to sell them on to the Ghana Cocoa Board officials. The beans are inspected and weighed again by the officials, before they buy them.
Bags go into container docks
The bags of beans are taken to the docks, from where they will be shipped to other countries. At the docks, they are checked again.
Cadbury Cargo
The cocoa beans are loaded into a ship bound for Liverpool. When they arrive their journey is nearly over. They are taken by lorry to Cadbury’s Chrik factory in Wales to be turned into Chocolate.