The video and pictures on this page is of Zurich-based Barry Callebaut, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality cocoa and chocolate – from the cocoa bean to the finished chocolate product.
Barry Callebaut is present in 27 countries including Ghana, operates around 40 production facilities and employs a diverse and dedicated workforce of about 6,000 people.
Barry Callebaut serves the entire food industry focusing on industrial food manufacturers, artisans and professional users of chocolate (such as Chocolatiers, pastry chefs or bakers) the latter with its two global brands Callebaut and Cacao Barry
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Barry Callebaut is the global leader in cocoa and chocolate innovations. It provides a comprehensive range of services in the fields of product development, processing, training and marketing.
Cost leadership is another important reason why global as well as local food manufacturers work together with Barry Callebaut.
Through its broad range of sustainability initiatives and research activities, the company works with farmers, farmer organizations and other partners to help ensure future supplies of cocoa and improve farmer livelihoods.
OUT IN THE FIELD WITH BARRY CALLEBAUT
These children who were donated a school building by Barry Callebaut
Cocoa at one of the Barry Callebaut supply farms.
Expatriates at a donation event. CSR
An expatriate engages the children at the school where the donation was made as part of the company's social responsibilty
Expat & local staff at the Cocoa Research Institute.
Staff uniforms.
The production of cocoa begins in the tropical regions around the Equator where the hot and humid climate is well suited to growing cocoa trees. 70% of the world's cocoa beans come from four West African countries:
Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon.
The cocoa bean, also cacao bean or simply cocoa cacao is the dried and fully fermented fatty bean of Theobroma cacao, from which cocoa solids and cocoa butter are extracted. They are the basis of chocolate, as well as many Mesoamerican foods such as mole sauce and tejate.
A cocoa pod (fruit) has a rough and leathery rind about 3 cm (1.2 in) thick (this varies with the origin and variety of pod). It is filled with sweet, mucilaginous pulp (called 'baba de cacao' in South America) enclosing 30 to 50 large seeds that are fairly soft and white to a pale lavender colour. While seeds are usually white, they become violet or reddish brown during the drying process. The exception is rare varieties of white cacao, in which the seeds remain white.
Historically, white cacao was cultivated by the Rama people of Nicaragua. The cacao tree is native to the Americas.
It may have originated in the foothills of the Andes in the Amazon and Orinoco basins of South America, current day Colombia and Venezuela, where today, examples of wild cacao still can be found. However, it may have had a larger range in the past, evidence for which may be obscured because of its cultivation in these areas long before, as well as after, the Spanish arrived.
New chemical analyses of residues extracted from pottery excavated at an archaeological site at Puerto Escondido in Honduras indicate that it was here where cocoa products were first consumed between 1400 and 1500 BC.
The new evidence also indicates that, long before the flavour of the cacao seed (or bean) became popular, it was the sweet pulp of the chocolate fruit, used in making a fermented (5% alcohol) beverage, which first drew attention to the plant in the Americas.
The cocoa bean was a common currency throughout Mesoamerica before the Spanish conquest.
Cacao trees will grow in a limited geographical zone, of approximately 20 degrees to the north and south of the Equator. Nearly 70% of the world crop is grown in West Africa.
COCOA
Barry Callebaut is a business-to-business company, fully integrated with a strong position in cocoa-origin countries.
