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07 August 2019

35 ton cocoa dissapeared

Our mission is about traceable cocoa beans. But we went a long way before our cocoa beans became traceable. In 2012 we bought 35 ton cocoa directly however, this batch never arrived. Read what happened in this blog.

"At the desk of Boekie, the unrest is increasing. He is just putting down Hubert. Nothing has been heard of the 35 tonnes of traceable cocoa beans from ABOCFA. Almost two sea containers have to be full. Never seen in the world; never before have so many been seen honest beans shipped unmixed, it was not easy to get them out of the port of Accra, the infrastructure is not designed for unmixed shipping, but after a visit to the port, and many faxes and skype with authorities and intermediaries, Hubert got permission to have them shipped in Tony's own way.The reason for the sudden flexibility is still not clear to him, but the fact is that it is not so much the freedom of slavery of the 35 tonnes that made the difference, but the fact that these beans were also grown organically. Anyway, according to his contacts, the beans are now transhipped and shipped separately, but the ship itself is still not in. In fact, there is no trace of the ship. already checked with merchants and people from the port. According to various sources, as far as they know, no ship with 35 tons left on board unmixed. However, there is still a ship in the port that meets the descriptions. It could be that. Only there are no containers with 35 tons of unmixed on this ship. They are probably still ashore somewhere. They have to be somewhere between the thousands and thousands of other containers, on the immense terrain of Cocoaboard, also known as Cocobod, the powerful government organization that formally says it is promoting the quality of the production and marketing of Ghanaian cocoa, but in practice purchasing , trade and storage of almost all cocoa beans in Ghana. Cocobod is the Kremlin of Ghanaian cocoa policy. In the struggle for the best cocoa parties, the best facilities, the most favorable conditions and the best privileges, all traders in Ghana compete for the favors of Cocobod. Now the case is that one trader in Ghana should be one step ahead of Cocobod. A trader with a territory of a size with which he shadows the other traders. He once managed to arrange the exclusive right to buy, trade and resell organic beans from farmers' cooperatives and local traders. If Tony's traceable beans want to get out of the country without mixing, they have to go to this gentleman.... is what just about everyone in the cocoa sector said when we announced that we wanted to make our cocoa beans traceable. It's not a natural thing to do for chocolate companies and very difficult. In 2012, we purchased our first shipment of traceable cocoa beans (to make it into chocolate milk) and that was accompanied by - let's call it - a challenge. Two full sea containers with 35 tons of cocoa disappeared from the radar and our chain director Boekie flew to Ghana to find out what happened. Jeroen Siebelink described the adventure in details in our Dutch book but since it's in, you know, Dutch, we translated the story in English below. 

“YOU'RE CRAZY!”

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