Cargill has announced at the Indonesia International Cocoa Conference that, by the end of May 2014, it will begin cocoa processing tests at its state-of-the-art cocoa processing plant in Gresik, in the East-Java region of Indonesia.
The construction of the plant is now nearing completion and is on target to open later this year, when it will process approximately 70,000 metric tonnes of cocoa beans into cocoa powder, cocoa butter and cocoa liquor for customers in Indonesia and other Asian countries.
The Gresik facility will be Cargill’s first cocoa processing plant in Asia, set up to better serve the needs of its customers in Asia.
The cocoa beans to be processed at the plant will be supplied primarily from Sulawesi, where cocoa farming is the principal income for hundreds of thousands of families and where Cargill Incorporated has been sourcing cocoa since 1995.
With the plant opening, Cargill will create approximately 200 new jobs in Indonesia, as well as additional positions in its existing R&D application centre in Kuala Lumpur.
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