Niche Cocoa Industry Ltd, Ghana’s largest fully integrated cocoa processor, recently signed a deal with Sidel to move into uncharted territory: beverage production. The plan is to support Ghana’s School Feeding Programme by providing 5.6 million pupils with ready-to-drink chocolate milk for 100 school days per year.
Niche Cocoa, founded in 2011, manufactures high quality, semi-finished cocoa products for export, such as cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, cocoa cake and cocoa powder. In 2017, Niche commenced the production of chocolate. The company plays an important role in transferring technical knowledge within Ghana’s cocoa processing industry while improving the livelihoods of local farmers.
Managing Director Edmund Poku explains: “We are excited about the opportunity to introduce the first and only locally produced and aseptically bottled chocolate milk in Ghana. Thanks to a loan from Dutch entrepreneurial development bank FMO, Niche Cocoa was able to purchase manufacturing equipment from Sidel to produce chocolate drinks.”
Mr. Poku continues: “We plan to serve approximately 5.6 million children across 261 districts in 9,350 schools on 100 school days per year.
“We decided to partner with Sidel because of our shared passion for uncompromising food and beverage quality.”
The company’s commitment is strengthened by certifications including FSSC 22000, UTZ, Fair Trade, Organic and FDA as well as the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA).
“Sidel’s long-standing experience in aseptic PET applications and packaging played a key role in our decision,” Mr. Poku adds. “Their local sales force and after-sales service capabilities, as well as the technical expertise evident in our business discussions, simplified the choice.”
Niche opted for a low-speed (16,000 bottles per hour) aseptic PET complete solution, which integrates Tetra Pak Processing Systems technologies and the Sidel Aseptic Combi Predis with dry preform and cap sterilisation systems, two units of Gebo OptiDry, a sleeve labeler, a VersaFilm Access shrink-wrapping system, and finally a stretch wrapper. Also included in Niche’s scope is Sidel’s EIT (Efficiency Improvement Tool), a market-leading data acquisition and plant intelligence system supporting beverage companies in decreasing unplanned downtime, reducing waste and costs, and increasing factory output.
Mr. Poku adds: “We strongly believe in the environmental credentials of PET – its 100% recyclability, its affordability, its lightweight potential and the dramatic savings in water usage and chemical consumption made possible by Predis.”
With 180 references installed worldwide, Sidel’s Aseptic Combi Predis is a proven concept that received US FDA validation in 2017. Since its launch, it has decontaminated more than 60 billion bottles globally while saving some 10 billion litres of water and 60,000 tonnes of PET.
The Ghana School Feeding Programme is a one-of-a-kind project that involves making healthy products easily available to the younger generation.
For Mr. Poku, the sky is the limit: “Our mid-term goal is not only to serve school children in Ghana but to sell our products to everyone in the country, while our long-term strategy includes expanding to other African.
“People’s health and good nutrition practices are what we seek to defend, within our own borders and beyond.”