Located in Ghana, the new facility will allow Koa to scale its production capabilities tenfold and allow the company to cooperate with an additional 10,000 cocoa smallholders in the country.
Working closely with cocoa smallholders, Koa utilises more parts of the cocoa fruit and increases cocoa farmers’ income while, at the same time, creating innovative and sustainable ingredients for chocolate, confectionery, ice cream, and beverages.
The company claims to have upcycled 800 tonnes of cocoa fruit, since its foundation in 2017, which had been overlooked in the cocoa industry.
It said more than 2,000 cocoa farmers benefitted within the first five years, earning a total of GHS 2.3 million ($300,000). To scale its business and meet the demand for cocoa fruit products, the company built a second factory located in Akim Achiase in the Eastern Region of Ghana.
Daniel Otu, Production & Operations Director at Koa, explained that “the new factory will allow the company to grow in line with the demand from our customers. The factory will generate 250 new jobs in rural Ghana and we will extend our cocoa fruit upcycling to an additional 10,000 cocoa farmers."
Koa’s Managing Director and Co-Founder, Anian Schreiber, also highlighted how the new factory serves as a milestone in the company's ambition to positively transform the cocoa value chain. “By supplying products for both the Ghanaian and international market, we will add value to the farmers, the communities, and all people who work around here. This factory will connect Achiase and Ghana to the world,” he said.
Speaking for the Ghanian government, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Minister of Trade and Industry, noted, “as a government, we believe that prosperity for all is achievable through industrial transformation that is inclusive and sustainable that also ensures the highest standards of food safety to guarantee significant market access for products wholly or substantially produced in Ghana.”
