Tracey Hughes, Managing Director of Henley Bridge Ingredients reflects on her experience visiting communities who are part of the Cacao-Trace programme.
28 Oct 2024
During October, our team at Henley Bridge Ingredients, and the Puratos team, visited the Ivory Coast to discover more about the Cacao-Trace programme and to see the positive impact it’s having on farming communities.
Why Cacao-Trace?
The Cacao-Trace Programme is very important to Henley Bridge, as a key distributor of chocolate and the Belcolade brand in the UK, it is imperative that we continue to source and supply ethical and sustainable chocolate both now and in the future. The aim of our visit to the Ivory Coast was to fully understand the programme and the positive changes that it is making to the local farmers and communities.
We were able to witness how the Cacao-Trace sustainable cocoa sourcing programme is implemented, and to see the journey from bean to bar, experiencing the process alongside the farm workers.
The reality of the amount of work and care that it takes to create the chocolate was astounding.
Our experience on the farms
At the start of the trip, we were welcomed into Dotou village on the cocoa farm of Mr Gnahoue Rodrigue and we were lucky enough to experience the day to day of his farm workers. Myself and the team conducted essential tree care, harvested pods, broke them and removed the cocoa beans ready for the next stage of fermentation.
It was reassuring to see the consistent quality checks along the journey from bean to bar.
Next we visited the Puratos Post-Harvest Centre in Adjamené to witness the fermentation process. It was amazing to see the wooden box fermenters and how community members, who are trained to become professional Cacao-Trace fermentation masters, process the beans. Every step of the journey allowed us to see how Puratos values the cocoa farming community, providing them with all of the skills required to have a career with financial security and a long-term positive impact.
One of the most enlightening parts of our trip was meeting the team from Puratos West Africa.
Whilst in the Ivory Coast, one of our guides was Jean. Jean’s father was a cocoa farmer, and he grew up on the plantation, which his family still owns and runs today. At the age of six, Jean left his family to live with his uncle and continue his education.
Jean now works for Puratos West Africa, specifically with the Cacao-Trace programme, to improve the quality of cacao and the lives of the farmers and villagers. Hearing Jean’s story, understanding the sacrifices he and his family made, and seeing how he is now working to help his people and community was truly touching.
Not everyone will have the same opportunity that Jean did, which highlights the importance of the Cacao-Trace programme in building schools and ensuring all children receive a basic education.
For all the guides we met, you could see and feel how proud they were of their roots and the work they were doing with the Cacao-Trace programme to improve the lives of their communities.
The highlight of the trip for us was to see first-hand the positive changes that the programme has already delivered and will continue to deliver.
The condition of the farms, with the cocoa trees being looked after and cared for correctly with plenty of healthy cocoa pods, visualised the future of chocolate.
Throughout the plantations that we visited, the positive changes of the Cacao-Trace programme were evident from the standards of the farming landscape to the education that the programme is providing to the farming community. Thanks to the Cacao-Trace programme more villages have access to schools, nearby water towers and maternity centres. However, there are still villages which do not have access to these things that we consider life essentials. It has proved that we all have much more to do to provide better quality of lives for people, to continually build a better planet, and to create better prosperity in the lives of so many people and families.
The trip was one of unbelievable emotions for all present on the journey of what we experienced first-hand in the village and local communities.
