Sierra Leone has faced many challenges in recent history. Internal conflict followed by the Ebola crisis caused the cocoa market to collapse, leaving many cocoa farmers with difficult access to the world market. In 2015, Tradin Organic started working with these farmers to set up an organic certified cocoa sourcing project. We configured a local control system with dedicated quality coordinators and invested in trainings and registration for farmers. This allowed us to successfully pass the organic audit and start exporting organic cocoa. 

With our organic cocoa production in full swing, our activities in Sierra Leone are growing rapidly. We have our own sourcing and exporting office in Kenema and have trained a team of quality coordinators who ensure optimum quality. Each bag of cocoa beans is registered so they can be traced back to their respective farmer, and then transported by our own truck drivers to our warehouse in Kenema. Here our team checks the quality of the cocoa beans, before preparing the bags for export. The cocoa beans are exported to our own organic cocoa processing facility in the Netherlands, the Crown of Holland, where they are processed into cocoa liquor, butter and powder. For more information on our cocoa products, click here.

Since March 2023, Tradin Organic has been co-leading an EU-funded development project (running until February 2027) to establish regenerative organic cocoa agroforestry in Sierra Leone. The project promotes biodiversity and sustainable livelihoods while countering deforestation and reducing farmer indebtedness through innovative, high-yielding agroforestry systems and Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs). It is implemented locally by Tradin Sierra Leone, cooperative partners, ECOTOP, ChildFund, and Green Africa.

Impact highlights:

• 10 cooperatives, 150 lead farmers, and 30 field officers supported
• 4,000 farmers directly engaged, sustaining 20,000 indirect jobs
• 1,100 ha converted to agroforestry systems
• 4,000 farmers trained in regenerative organic practices and certification
• 50 VSLAs and 150 Farmer Field Schools established
• 3,000 MT of Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) cocoa

We are very  proud to present our second sustainability report on organic cocoa. In this report we want to highlights the most important sustainability milestones of our cocoa sourcing & processing projects. 

Download The Report 

For a more in depth look at our processes, check out this video of our organic cocoa bean sourcing project in Sierra Leone. From collection to registering for traceability, the organic cocoa beans are then brought to our warehouse in Kenema where the beans are further dried and prepared for export.