Help small cocoa farmers make a living

In our last update a few months ago I was mentioning the imminent arrival of our 1977 stone grinder manufactured in Germany and sailed through to Vanuatu from Hungary where it was used to produce for chocolate waffles. The beast weights 3t and was delivered in a 40ft container completing our buildings set-up. A few pictures are worth thousand words and here you can see the landing of the container at active center. Not to mention that to get there, we had to deal with a bit of landscaping (enlarge the road) and not less than three attempts with two trucks getting stuck at the bottom of our land in the mud.

Once the container was delivered, real work started for us with the dismantling and reconditioning of that old piece of equipment. It is a weird feeling to dismount a machine you purchased based on pictures and discover the amplitude of work to be done, remember pictures always shows the nice side of the story. To make it a little more colorful and tasty, once we opened the machine to access the bearing and hidden corners, we had to remove about six bags full of waffles, chocolate and industrial grease from the bearings. Who ever said food grade certifications are better enforced in the first world? At least I will never ever see chocolate waffles the same way.

After a consequent amount of cleaning, recurring, sanding and drying, we finally managed to uncover the steel frame and serial numbers. The beauty of having the machine in an empty container under tropical latitudes is that is also works perfectly for painting job as in a natural oven. The only issue is that everything in the container including the guy painting gets cooked. Though after a few week-ends and kilos lost, here is the result and we truly believe it will be a masterpiece for our visitors to see in operations. It will grind about 200kg of chocolate beans per batch and transform them in delicate flavors and rich dark chocolate for your pleasure.

To finish the chapter on chocolate machinery, we are still waiting for our 500l conching tank and a tempering machine flying all the way from Italy. Both are on their way and should arrive within a few weeks. These are the last pieces of equipment we need to start the production and we are looking forward to it.

Now about cooling chocolate under tropical latitudes, let me elaborate. Chocolate making is a process that implies hot temperatures from the fermentation at 45 to 60 degree Celsius to roasting at about 120deg. and finally melanging and conching and tempering at about 45 where chocolate is liquid. Now to obtain shiny chocolate bars, it takes one more step that is cooling. Normally, in a prosper business you just go to your local supplier and by a cool room for the decent price of the material and handwork supplied, plug it to the grid and off you go. Now when you leave in Vanuatu wher everything is possible but slightly more complicated, you can either import your cool room from foreign suppliers or spend some time in research and built it yourself. At ACTIV prosperity will come but for now the budgets are tight and we are huge fan of the DIY. Thus after a few hours and e-mails exchanged with friends at Bahen.co a chocolate maker from western Australia who helped us from day one, we found another way to do it. It involves recycling (which we love), a bit of time and small investment.

Now let us tell you how your money was spent. An average cooling room of 250x250x300cm would cost you about 6000USD which would then raise to about USD 11000 including transport and taxes in Vanuatu. It is made of several layers of insulating foams and coatings and has a cooling system that is almost identical to your traditional air conditioner. Though the way we do it is simple, we pay a visit to our beloved hardware stores in town and collect as many as possible of these polystyrene foams used to protect imported equipment such as fridges and other fancy appliances. A truck full of foam, you buy a few rolls of fiberglass, a dozen pieces of treated pine timber and a box full of screws. Last you need a few cement sheets for a nice finish inside and out. Total bill is slightly over US 400bucks and a few smiles for the polystyrene foam (we will pay them in chocolate bars later).

For the cooling system now, word of mouth is your best allies. You try find someone who wants to get rid of its old-style air conditioning block, you know, those looking like your grandma’s TV screen and going all the way through the wall of your house? Well these are still quite common around here and it didn’t take long to find one. Now the last trick come from a small box ordered on the all mighty internet that is used to shunt the thermostat of your air conditioner and make it run like crazy to get the temperature as low as you need it. The beauty of chocolate making is that you only need 13deg c to reach your goal and that is not far from the usual specs of classic air-cons (16-25deg range).

As we speak we are still working on the cooling room, the frame has been built and the layers of polystyrene dispatched all around. The next step is to cover it in fiber glass and finish with cement sheets and cooling system installation.

That will be all for today, funding wise we are still looking for some support to acquire more of these silicon moulds we use for the chocolate bars and finalize the design of the packaging. 

We thank you all for your continuous support.

With love from Vanuatu.