Meet Our Farmers

Mr. Harish Manoj Kumar owns a 12 year old cacao plantation located in the foothills of the Anamalai Hills in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu India. He manages his farm in a sustainable manner following principles of permaculture and Korean natural farming, without the use of chemicals. Mr Harish’s cacao beans are primarily Amelanado/Criollo mixed grown and intercropped with coconut and nutmeg. Their beans won an ICA award and was selected as one of the top 18 samples worldwide.

Michael Tan from Singapore operates a small cacao buying station located in the Poblacion, town centre of Calinan. They buy wet cacao beans from smallholder farmers and ferment these beans in wooden fermentation boxes and sundry them in purpose built solar dryers.
Their cacao processing capacity is limited to about 20 tons per month allowing them to process in small batches, ensuring great quality and development of good flavour notes.

Chemor is a main town in Kinta district, Perak, Malaysia. It is about 198km north of Kuala Lumpur. In this small township, 74 year old Mr Tai Sow Phin, operates his 1.2 hectares cacao plantation. Mr Tai has been farming cacao for the past 14 years and works closely with the Malaysia Cacao Board to continuously improve his fermentation technique. He adopted a unique shallow box fermentation technique developed by the Malaysia Cocoa Board which produces a less acidic fermented cacao beans. Through his hardwork and perseverance, he now has one of the top cacao farms in West Malaysia, cultivating high quality cacao beans.
Despite only having 1000 cacao trees, productivity is good with an average of 300kg per month.

Mr. Simon Ting’s farm is located in Kampung, a small town in Kampung Panchor.
31 year-old Mr. Simon Ting, took over a plot of 20 acre land from his father and decided to plant cacao and coconut trees. Simon learned everything from scratch from planting and harvesting to fermentation and drying. His hard-work paid off as his cacao beans are now sold to several major artisanal chocolate makers in Malaysia. He currently operates 4 farms located in Panchor and Lendu within Malacca with a total land area of 20 acres planting various cacao varieties.

Our Sungai Ruan beans are sourced in Malaysia from the Koh family. With more than 30 years of Cacao farming experience, they dedicate their time into growing, fermenting and drying – perfecting cacao processing. Chocolate made from their estate is known to have a unique fruity taste due to the abundance of fruit plantations surrounding it.

The cacao beans used to produce this chocolate bar are sourced directly from Vung Tau, a port city in the Ba Ria province in Southern Vietnam. Mr Tran Van Thanh, owner of the farm started cacao farming 15 years ago and has dedicated his time refining the growing, fermenting and drying methods to deliver the best cacao beans. His farm demonstrates good farming practices according to UTZ standards.