Barry Callebaut has joined forces with the Malaysian Cocoa Board in a bid to improve the quality of cocoa and chocolate in the country.
A memorandum of understanding on a joint research project was signed at a ceremony in Putrajaya, Malaysia today (16 March), with the goal of “improving the taste qualities of Malaysian cocoa beans, to increase their content of functional ingredients and to change their colour”.
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Simultaneously, the processing of cocoa beans will be improved, Barry Callebaut and the Board said.
Selbourne Estate, a company in Malaysia that operates cocoa plantations in Pahang, will serve as an experimental plantation for controlled fermentation. The firm is a subsidiary of Kuala Lumpur Kepong.
For the first implementation phase, around 20 additional sites have been selected. Barry Callebaut said it intends to control the volume of fermented “superior grade” cocoa beans from Malaysia in the next three years and increase this to 5,000 tonnes.
The beans will then be processed in the Barry Callebaut Malaysia factory in Port Klang and made into premium chocolate and cocoa products, which will be sold in the Asia-Pacific region under the well-known brands and Selbourne KLK Cocoa.
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By GlobalDataJuergen Steinemann, CEO of Barry Callebaut, said at the signing ceremony: “Given the current growth restrictions on the purchase of cocoa from the Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa-growing country, and our increasing demand for cocoa, the diversification of cacao origin for us is a strategic necessity.”
He added: “Malaysia and its neighbouring countries currently produce about 15% of the world’s annual cocoa crop, and it is therefore logical for us to source alternatives in West Africa.”
