Cocoa Beans

Cocoa beans are seeds of the cocoa tree. They have a rigid, but at the same time a brittle shell in a reddish violet color. The basic exporters of cocoa beans are: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, The Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Togo, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Sri Lanka.

The collection of cocoa beans picked by hands, are usually harvested two times during the year: the basic harvest is from October throughout February and an intermediate is from May to June. Freshly picked cocoa beans have a sourly harsh taste and a pale coloration (whitish violet). The ripening cocoa beans undergo fermentation (storing by mound into collars) and drying, after which they are brown in order with further processing to preserve gustatory qualities, and necessity of physico-chemical properties (easy separation of shell from nucleus, etc.). Subsequently, the process of sorting of cocoa beans by the physical parameters and their refinements by chemicals from pests are proceeded.

Cocoa beans have different sizes and weights: the length of normally developed beans is in the range of 20 - 28 mm, width 12 - 16 mm, thickness 5 - 10 mm. The weight of one bean is 0.8 – 2.0 g.