MANACAO – our cocoa from Ecuador

After a few years of buying Ecuador cocoa beans from local exporters, we founded MANACAO S.A. in late 2014 and started operations in 2015 on our path to greater transparency and better-quality control. As the location for our own sourcing and export company we chose the village of Paraíso La 14 in the cocoa growing area of the “Manga del Cura” in the department of Manabi.

“Manga del Cura” is a wonderful region embedded between the Pacific Coast and the departments of Guayas, Los Ríos and Pichincha. Cocoa is the main crop in the region.

The cocoa production of Ecuador has increased strongly over the past 20 years and has exceeded 360’000 metric tons in 2021. Ecuador is the world’s third largest cocoa producer at present. Whereas the quantity of the traditional Cacao Nacional variety has been decreasing the strong growth is due to the more productive and resistent CCN51 (Colección Castro Naranjal 51) being more and more recognized as well as fine flavour cocoa by the chocolate industry.

MANACAO S.A. counts with a well developped buying and processing center and a dedicated team of workers, employees and field staff. Since the beginning we started to organize farmers in the surroundings and to support them through individual trainings and farmer field school sessions through our own internal control system and field staff.

MANACAO’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 Paraíso La 14 where we collect the cocoa directly from farmers or through local intermediaries after thorough quality control. All the cocoa we purchase we dry to export level, clean and bag it in our own facilities. The required fumigation takes place in our own warehouse where we finally stuff and seal the sea containers ourselves for subsequent transport to the ports of Guayaquil and Posorja. We control the whole supply chain from farm to port.