Food and beverage manufacturers seeking to meet the growing demand a­­mongst Asian consumers for chocolate and cocoa products will benefit from a greater availability of high quality cocoa powders following the inauguration of Cargill’s cocoa processing facility in Gresik, Indonesia. Creating over 300 new jobs, the USD 100 m facility will have a 70,000-metric-ton processing capacity and will produce Cargill’s premium brand Gerkens?® cocoa powders, as well as high quality cocoa liquor and butter. Its blending capability will leverage the company’s broad and in-depth cocoa knowledge to enable customers to benefit from su­perior, con­­sistent and tailor-made solutions that meet Asian con­sumers’ taste profiles.

The cocoa beans processed at the Gresik plant will be supplied primarily from Sulawesi, where cocoa farming is the principal income for hundreds of thousands of families and where Cargill has been sourcing co­coa since 1995. The company is strengthening activ­ities to support sus­tainable cocoa production in Indonesia as part of the Cargill Cocoa Promise, the company’s global commitment to improving the livelihoods of farmers, their families and their communities. Cargill plans to train 4,500 cocoa farmers in newly created Farmer Field Schools and aims to enable 2,000 of them to gain independent sustain­able certification. The new facility and the expanded sourcing op­erations in Indonesia will complement Cargill’s existing global net­work of cocoa sourcing operations and processing facilities.