Major cocoa material area to be built in Dong Nai

Trong Duc Cocoa Co., Ltd in southern Dong Nai province plans to work with local farmers on developing a 1,000-ha specialised area for farming cacao alternating with cashew trees in the locality, so as to meet its growing demand of raw materials for processing.
Trong Duc Cocoa Co., Ltd in southern Dong Nai province plans to workwith local farmers on developing a 1,000-ha specialised area for farmingcacao alternating with cashew trees in the locality, so as to meet itsgrowing demand of raw materials for processing.

According to thecompany’s director Dang Truong Khanh, his firm will ink agreements withagricultural cooperatives in the districts of Dinh Quan, Tan Phu, ThongNhat and Xuan Loc to provide local farmer with equipment andtechnologies for processing cacao and cashew fruits.

The company will then purchase the partly processed fruit at a higher price than the market price.

Apartfrom the major products of cocoa powder, wine and chocolate, thecompany intends to produce several other products such as juice fromfresh cacao and cashew fruit in the future, Khanh stated.

Accordingto Khanh, his firm has an increasing demand of raw materials forproduction, with an estimated volume of about 3,600 tonnes per year,while existing cacao area in Dong Nai can supply only 625 tonnes.

Toensure the quality of materials for processing, the enterprise hasencouraged local farmers to cultivate the crops in line with theglobally-recognised UTZ quality control programme, which stands forfostering sustainable farming and bettering opportunities for farmers.

As many as 79 cacao growing households in Dong Nai have received their certification from the programme so far.

The cacao plantation area in Vietnam has increased to 22,000 ha from9,000 ha in 2007, providing 5,000 tonnes of dried beans in 2013. Thecountry plans to have 50,000 ha under cacao cultivation and produceabout 100,000 tonnes of fermented beans by 2020.-VNA

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