Barry-Callebaut is the world leader in cocoa and chocolate production with 7 bilions annual sales and 1200 employees around the world. The company produces its own cocoa plants in Uruçuca unit in Bahia, Brasil. So far, the grafting technique has always been 100% manual with buddy tape and was generating 350 000 grafted plants / years.
Omega grafting trials to boost productivity
As manual grafting generates high labor cost, Barry-Callebaut started to think about a way to increase productivity. In fact, the company is ambitious and wants to increase production to 6 million plants / year from 2026. As omega grafting technique allows automation and also reduces costs thanks to the use of wax, they started to think about applying this method to cocoa plants.
Because Wax & Grafts offers a range of the best products for grafting and is present in more than 40 countries, Barry-Callebaut contacted us to see how we could help them to set up an experimentation.
The trial started in 2021 in collaboration with Wax & Grafts
At the beginning of the year, we sent to Uruçuca unit grafting material and waxes, and the staff grafted a bunch of ocoa plants with omega grafting technique.
… in the end, the grafting trial turned out successful ! This discovery will definitely open new horizons for the whole cocoa sector… and for us too ;-)