DOMINICAO – our cocoa from the Dominican Republic

In 2015 we started buying cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic through a joint venture with a local exporter. Right from the beginning we concentrated on organic certified cocoa, both the fermented Hispaniola type as well as the unfermented Sánchez type. In late 2017 we joined forces with our partner and began operating as DOMINICAO SRL on our path to greater transparency and better quality control. We chose the village of Maimón as the location for our own sourcing and export company, which is surrounded by the cocoa growing areas of Yamasá, Cotuí and San Francisco de Macorís.

Despite its limited cocoa crop of around 80’000 metric tons per year, the Dominican Republic has been and continues to be the world’s largest producer of organic certified cocoa thanks to its unique location as a Caribbean Island. The island is free from moniliasis, and witches broom diseases and the soil is typically very fertile. The agroforestry type cocoa plantations fit ideally into today’s requirements for environmentally friendly agriculture.

DOMINICAO’s objectives are to promote:

Maintain and improve farmer’s incomes by assisting them to achieve higher yields and by paying them a fair price for their cocoa
Assist capacity development by providing cocoa farmers with individual technical assistance from our field staff, as well as through the information exchanged in our farmer field school sessions, which cover topics such as income diversification, accounting, environmental protection, gender equality, nutrition and reforestation
Eliminate any form of forced labour, child labour or discrimination we encounter
Ensure the traceability and quality of the cocoa we purchase, including that it does not originate from protected or illegally deforested areas
Strengthen and maintain the long-standing relationships we have with our partner farmers and employees

We operate our processing plant and central warehouse in Maimón where we collect the cocoa directly from farmers or through local intermediaries. All the cocoa we purchase we dry to export level, clean and bag it in our own facilities. Sea containers are stuffed by our own staff at our warehouse and are trucked to the port of Caucedo from there. We control the whole supply chain from farm to port.