Côte d’Ivoire, the second largest producer of cashew nuts in the world behind Vietnam, has decided to triple its processing capacity for raw nuts, also known as cashew nuts. The country will launch the construction of three packaging factories in 2022, with the help of the World Bank.
In 2020, gross cashew production reached one million tonnes for the first time – compared to 850,000 in 2019 – according to official figures. But only 10% of this production was processed on site.
Raw cashew nuts are today mainly exported to India, Vietnam and Brazil, which are home to processing industries before reaching the main consuming countries: India, the United States, the European Union, China, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.
“The agro-industrial sites of Brobo (center), Yamoussoukro (center) and Bondoukou (East) will transform nearly 300,000 tonnes per year from 2022”, explained to AFP Karim Berthé, the director of processing at the Cotton-Cashew Council (CCA) which manages the sector.
Cashew nuts undergo a manufacturing process that has hitherto been fairly traditional, which consists of boiling and drying the nuts in order to break the shell, loosen the seed without damaging it and remove part of the acid from the hulls by sweating. .
After this delicate shelling process, tens of millions of nuts are cut at the intersection of the two hemispheres, before being placed in an oven at 65 ° to roast them and retain their natural benefits.
Côte d’Ivoire, which has nearly 250,000 producers grouped together in around 20 cooperatives, aims to achieve a transformation rate of its gross cashew production of 50% by 2025.
The cashew nut kernel, which today sells for more than cocoa, is used in cooking and in cosmetics, while the resin contained in its shell lends itself to various industrial uses, in particular in the braking systems of planes.
“These installed units will increase the local transformation rate from 10 to 40%”
Karim Berthé, Director of Processing at the Cotton-Cashew Councilto AFP
Its culture long remained marginal in the country was developed by a businesswoman, Massogbè Touré Diabaté. It was she who created the first cooperative in 1981 to plant cashew trees, which has since become the Ivorian Cashew Processing Company (Sita-SA), one of the country’s industrial pride.
“It was during one of my trips to India, in Madras, that I realized that we had the same climate and especially that the dynamic economy of this region was based on cashew nuts.” Massogbè Touré Diabaté then decides to try the adventure at home. Until then, the cashew tree had only been used to reforest the savannahs of his native town, Odienné, located in the north of Côte d’Ivoire. “The cultivation of the cashew tree made it possible to fight against the advance of the desert, but there was little interest in its fruit.”
While national production has just passed one million tonnes, it is now a question of capitalizing on this achievement through its processing and packaging.
The challenge of industrialization that Sita has been trying to meet for years is a question of survival. “Today we are selling our harvest to Asians, among others. But if for some reason they don’t come and buy, what are we going to do with our production? If we continue to give all the raw material to Asia, it is their economies that will develop while we need to create wealth and jobs in our country “, underlines Massogbé Touré Diabaté, who has since become the vice-president of the General Confederation of Businesses of Côte d’Ivoire (CGECI), the Ivorian employers, of which she is the only female member of the management board.