SECTOR CAPABILITIES - Cocoa Paste From Ghana

Ghana a leading cocoa exporter since decades

Cocoa products from Ghana are produced, processed and exported throughout the whole year. Ghana is one of the largest exporters of cocoa products worldwide, with decades of experience in the production of cocoa. The country remains the best quality bulk cocoa producer by ensuring minimum quality standards, set by Ghana Cocoa Board. These standards exceed the benchmarks set in the international cocoa market for the trade in Good Fermented Cocoa. Therewith, ‘Ghana made’ has been grown as a symbol of quality in the international cocoa industry.

Cocoa paste is a value added product, in the latest stage of transforming cocoa beans into chocolate. It is the result of a refining process of the mixture of cocoa liquor, cocoa butter and other ingredients (sugar, milk, etc.) traveling through a series of rollers. Ghanaian cocoa production of smooth paste has been developed rapidly during the late 2000’s. It led to approximately double the exports from 2011 on wards, compared to the period before.

Ghana develops new standard for sustainable cocoa

Over the past few years Ghana has led the development of a new global standard for sustainable cocoa. This standard has been adopted by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and used internationally to measure the cocoa’s quality level. The new standard was developed through an international project. It supported the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) under the Trade Capacity Building Programme for Ghana, funded by the Switzerland Government (State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO) and the United Nations Industrial Development Cooperation (UNIDO).

The following parts of standards on sustainability and traceability of cocoa were launched Mid 2018

• ISO 34101-1 Requirements for sustainability management systems
• ISO 34101-2 Requirements for performance (Profit, People and Planet related
• ISO 34101-3 Requirements for traceability

The fourth part of the sustainable and traceable cocoa beans standard is in process and concerns the ISO 34101-4, on Requirements for Certification Schemes.

National standards for cocoa reviewed since 2017

Also, four national standards on cocoa have been reviewed. The optimized standards have been prepared and submitted for gazetting and publishing since July 2017. Standards involved include:

• GS CAC RCP 1 – General Principles for Food Hygiene
• GS 547 – Specification for cocoa bean
• GS 741 – Specification for chocolate
• GS 739 – Specification for Cocoa Powders (Cocoas) and Dry Mixture of cocoa and sugars.

Buying cocoa paste from Ghana gives you several great advantages, such as:

• General high quality of Ghanaian cocoa, because of the
  • Slightly higher-than-average fat content
  • Low levels of bean defects, resulting in favourable flavour
  • Low levels of debris
• Certainty of consistent and reliable shipments and documents via the Cocoa Marketing Company
• Constant options to buy our cocoa butter, because of the large production of cocoa in Ghana
• The use of environmentally friendly processes in the entire production value chain