The most important raw material in manufacturing of chocolate is cocoa, from which the essential ingredients of chocolate are derived – namely cocoa mass and cocoa butter. The secret to chocolate’s delicious flavour lies in the cocoa mass or cocoa butter derived from the cocoa beans.
Cloetta Fazer produces cocoa mass from seeds found in the fruit of cocoa trees grown in a narrow belt along the equator. Nearly 70 per cent of the world cocoa crop comes from the west coast of Africa. Cocoa trees thrive only in hot and humid tropical climates, and produce the most abundant harvests at a distance of around 8–20 degrees from the equator.
Cocoa is counted as one of our finest raw materials. The cocoa trees start bearing fruit at an age of 3 years, but do not reach maximum yield until after 8–10 years. A single cocoa tree produces an average of 20–30 fruits per year. Each fruit contains 25–30 cocoa beans, i.e. the basic material for chocolate.
The cocoa begins acquiring its distinctive flavour already in the first treatment
A couple of days after the ripe fruits are harvested, the pulp and seeds are removed and treated according to traditional methods. The true cocoa flavour starts developing long before the cocoa products arrive at Cloetta Fazer’s production facilities. Every stage of the process from fermentation* to drying of the cocoa beans is vital in achieving the desired flavour and colour.
*Fermentation = a process in which the pulp and seeds are removed the from the cocoa fruit and stored in boxes or heaps covered with banana leaves for 5–7 days to remove the bitter taste.