One year of “exclusively organic cocoa processing” – an interview with David Yersin

How is PRONATEC Swiss Cocoa Production doing, one year after it started production? David Yersin talks about customer requirements, trends and plans for the future at “his” cocoa processing plant at the heart of Europe.

David, how do you see this first year of ours, looking back?

I am very pleased with how we successfully went into production in record time and with business in our first year. We are currently working a 3-shift operation, five days a week. Our products are very popular and the vast majority of our customers speak very positively about the quality. They are particularly full of praise for our cocoa butter, and also for the single-origin cocoa masses that we make to customer specifications.
 

What special customer needs can we now meet?

As we intended, we stand out for being very flexible and this allows us to process even small quantities from many different places of origin. I’ll just skim through them… (makes a list). Since June 2022, we have processed cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic, Peru, Togo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Sao Tomé, Madagascar and Sierra Leone. It is this flexibility that makes us unique, as well as our individual roasting profiles for each country of origin.

Were there any customer requirements that came as a bit of a surprise?

The fact that the conventional food industry also became aware of us as an organic business. Even there, the demand for traceable cocoa mass, cocoa butter and cocoa powder and the ability to prove that no child labour was used in production are becoming more and more important. So we have also had some enquiries from non-organic manufacturers.

Then there was the huge demand for fine cocoa mass for chocolate production. Here, the high demand led to bottlenecks, but we hope to overcome that by installing a second ball mill in December 2023.

We were also surprised by the demand for liquid deliveries of cocoa butter and cocoa mass. Many customers like that because it is energy- and cost-efficient. We are considering introducing more storage tanks.

What is the biggest challenge in production at the moment?

The irregularity of customer orders is quite challenging for our production planning. Time and again we have seen peaks in demand which we would like to be able to cope with by having more storage tanks. That’s what we’re addressing in this quarter.

Sustainable cocoa processing – is it really possible?

The decision that we made to be exclusively organic was far-reaching. But for us, sustainability goes much further than that. Energy efficiency and environmental performance were key criteria in our planning. In order to survive in an expensive country like Switzerland, it was obvious that the whole plant had to be as efficient as possible. From the start, using separate temperature zones and a heat recovery system have ensured excellent energy efficiency. Our real-time monitoring also has a positive effect on energy consumption. We are able to reduce emissions thanks to our ultra-modern waste gas treatment system. Furthermore, since March 2023 about 80% of our cocoa beans have been transported from the EU ports where they arrive along the Rhine to Basel by ship, which is good for the environment. From Basel, they travel just a short distance by lorry to our new warehouse at Eggingen (Germany) – which is powered by solar and hydroelectric power – and from there they cross the border to our cocoa processing plant.

Everyone is talking about the new EU regulation on deforestation-free supply chains

We have set up a project team which is working on a plan of action. Our customers must be able to be confident that our cocoa products comply with the new rules. We are currently testing an app for recording georeferenced data, so that we can trace the beans back to individual plots of land and we’re working on a method of monitoring deforestation. We had a look at the new law as well as PRONATEC's project plan during our last online customer event, the PRONATEC INSiGHT on 27 June 2023. 

Are there already new markets opening up?

PRONATEC is seeing keen interest from customers in the USA and Canada, too. So we have taken steps to enable us to serve this large and attractive organic market efficiently and close to the customers. We will remain true to our promise of being a purely organic processing plant in the future. We find that that’s very important in opening the door to new customers.

What plans are there for the immediate future?

We have laid sound foundations with our investment in the plant. Now it is a question of optimising certain aspects and incorporating our findings from the first year to improve productivity and eliminate some remaining bottlenecks. I would like to say thank you very much to all PRONATEC’s employees at the production site in Beringen and at head office in Winterthur for the tremendous commitment that they show every day!