About Supply Chain
This supply chain isn't only about the cocoa bean is harvested. It is also about how the ingredients that come from the cocoa beans are processed and the steps that come after the processing to make a final product that gets consumed, like chocolat.
Supply Chain of the Product
The cocoa pods that are harvested with child labour are grown in Western Africa in countries like Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana and harvested by young children that unfortunately don’t get paid a fair amount of money each day and are at the same time deprived of an education. This is the beginning of the cocoa beans supply chain. After they are harvested they are carried in baskets to a cutting area where workers cut out the beans from the inside of the pod. The outer shell is opened without touching the bean on the inside; it is necessary to cut the bean in a very precise way. When they have been cut out of the pods the beans are ready to be fermented and dried. The cocoa beans are fermented by putting them into wooden crates with banana leaves on top and in between. They are left like this for 2-7 days until they are ready to be dried. Cocoa beans can be dried out in the sun if the climate is hot enough. Usually it is in Western Africa. They are left out to dry on mats or trays until the moisture percentage of the cocoa bean has reached 6-7%. When this step is done they are packaged and ready to be transported to a factory to transform them into cocoa based products like cocoa powder. When the cocoa based products come out of the processing factory they are transported to a manufacturing factory where they are used as ingredients to make products like chocolate. When the chocolate products come out of the manufacturing factory they are transported to warehouses where they are assembled for orders. When the products are ordered they are transported to supermarkets where consumers can buy them.