The Manager for Membership, External Relations, and Projects at the Chamber, Jane Okyere-Aduachie, paid a courtesy call on Aedo van der Weij, Managing Director of Cargill Ghana.
Cargill has been sourcing cocoa from Ghana for over 40 years and in 2008 opened its state-of-the-art cocoa processing facility in Tema. Today the company has around 700 employees sourcing and processing cocoa products to service food and confectionary customers locally and around the world.
In 2016 Cargill added a Licensed Buying Company (LBC) to its Ghanaian footprint. The LBC operations bring innovative ways to trade with our farmers emphasizing our sustainability and traceability efforts, followed by an expansion of their cocoa processing plant capacity in 2019.
Cargill is mindful of the impact its operations have on host communities and stakeholders, so the company invested $3.2 million into sustainability programming with partners CARE and the International Cocoa Initiative. They have also built new schools and provided other school infrastructure.
The company has also financially supported the Kosmos Innovation Center program, which invests in young entrepreneurs and small businesses by providing seed funding, capacity building, and mentorship through innovation challenges to promote the development of promising local startup enterprises.
Cargill works alongside farmers, producers, manufacturers, retailers, governments, and other organizations to fulfill their purpose to nourish the world in a safe, responsible, and sustainable way.