A project that Koa are engaged with, building what the company calls Africa’s largest cocoa fruit factory, is finally taking shape, as the company has reported bricks are now being laid for the factory.
The main building covers an area of approximately 1500 square metre, with walls that will separate production areas from non-production areas and define the hygiene areas. The factory is expected to be open
Other smaller, adjoining buildings such as the extraction building and utilities and storage building are taking shape too – the extraction building will be where the raw materials are first delivered in case processing happens at the factory instead of communities. From there, juice and pulp will be transported into the main building where secondary processing takes place.
Koa was first founded in 2017, and is involved in upcycling the cocoa fruit and reducing the amount of discarded cocoa pulp. In 2022, five years after its founding, the company became a B Corp in recognition of its responsible business.
“Nowadays, measuring the success of a company needs to go beyond pure financial performance. Since our inception, we measure our success on the triple bottom line: people, planet and profit,” explained Benjamin Kuschnik, Co-Founder and Group Finance Director of Koa. “Being B Corp certified, we join a community of businesses around the world leading the transformation of the global economic system and we hope that many of our peers will follow our example.”
Justice Mensah Bonsu, Processing Manager at Koa Switzerland, was our Sweet Talk interview in the February issue of International Confectionery. As the first employee of the organisation, he explained that by working in the cocoa sector, he saw that it had “much unused potential”.
“In the different sectors in which I have worked, I have contributed to the development of several innovative processes – for example, the cocoa pulp processing. In pursuit of my entrepreneurial drive, I effectively leveraged my experience to streamline the production process involved in developing the cocoa fruit pulp into an ingredient for the international F&B industry as well as gastronomy,” Justice explained.
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