Member story: Zorzor Women's Cocoa Collective books its first full container
Three hundred and twenty women growers, one fermentation centre, and a first 12.5-tonne container bound for Europe.
When the Zorzor Women's Cocoa Collective joined the cluster, their beans sold in small mixed lots to travelling buyers, at whatever price the day offered. Twelve months later they have booked their first full export container - 12.5 tonnes of uniformly fermented, sun-dried Grade I beans.
The change was not one big thing. It was a shared fermentation centre replacing under-ripe heap fermentation; drying tables replacing roadside tarpaulins; a lot-code book that records every delivery; and a listing on the cluster marketplace that a Monrovia exporter answered within a week.
"We always had the trees," says the collective's chairwoman. "What we did not have was the address where buyers could find us."
The collective's traceability profile - 100% of member farms GPS-mapped - is on their directory page. Their next listing goes live before the main crop.