From School Class to World Class in Record Time

by Christian Dahm, ACA Managing Director

My visit to Anatrans on 21 May 2013, once again confirmed that great things are possible in the cashew industry in Africa. When I joined ACA in late 2008, Anatrans and Genese were still in start-up mode, developing relations with farmer groups, promoting quality and post-harvest handling in a place that was rather known for poor quality cashew nuts and farmers obtaining poor returns from selling to raw nut traders only. Processing cashew locally seemed like a remote ambition and Anatrans and Genese like schoolboys with a lot to learn. Since its 2010 inauguration, Anatrans has already become Seal approved! On my visits to Bobo-Dioulassou, I saw that progress was being made at a breathtaking pace. I saw the site that was supposed to become Burkina Faso’s largest agro-processing factory in 2010, more or less just a flat large empty space. When I came back a year later, the factory had already been inaugurated and cashew was indeed being processed. I could see that the Anatrans team had made immense progress, led by Wim Simonse and August Boudo. They had understood that there was still quite some way to go, but they would not let that slow them down: as soon as the first building was completed, it was used as raw material storage, cutting section, peeling, grading and grading section and office space at the same time. They had to improvise a lot, while construction was continuing around them, workers needed to be trained, farmer trainings were continuing, establishment of  farmer groups was going on.

It was fantastic to see the result of these years of hard work on my last visit: one of West Africa’s largest cashew processing factories, a happy work force of more than 800 people, most of whom women with little education and other employment opportunities, a proud Kees Cozijnsen (who took over factory management from Wim Simonse, he is President of the board) showing us a sophisticated traceability system and explaining to me how Anatrans could easily employ more people and scale up operations. Anatrans employs 800 workers from the local community. Processing and exporting the value-added cashew kernel is not only creating jobs in the local community but also a multiplier effect on local businesses providing the factory with catering, cleaning, suppliers and many other services. It is impressive to see the difference a cashew factory makes on people’s lives but also on the quality of cashew produced in its surroundings (Burkina quality has significantly improved over the past years). But I was not the only one who was impressed. Jim Giles, former Vice-President of Planters, the nut brand of Kraft Foods (largest in the world) approved the factory with the ACA Quality and Sustainability Seal, a mark for top quality processors in Africa that ensure sustainable labor conditions. It has made me proud to promote Anatrans as members of the African Cashew Alliance but it was when last week, the Intersnack (Europe’s largest snack manufacturer) lead buyer proudly presented fair trade cashew from Burkina Faso to the INC, the world’s largest nut industry event, that I knew that Anatrans had really gone to world class in record time and that surely more is still to come. Congratulations to the Anatrans team!