ACA Represents Cashew at the 30th Anniversary World Nut & Dried Fruit Congress

Business was cracking at the nut industry’s biggest event of the year, the International Nut & Dried Fruit Congress (INC) Conference in Barcelona, Spain, at the end of May. ACA’s leadership met with traders, buyers, roasters, national councils, regulating bodies, certifying bodies and other association representative, ACA presented the organization, its objectives, and discussed potential areas of collaboration. The primary goal of attending this event was for ACA to promote cashew shelled in Africa on the international market, and both Leonard Garden and Christian Dahm, ACA Managing Director, deemed the conference a success.

“The most rewarding meeting held by ACA was with a snackfood retailer who proposes to display support for the ACA seal on their retail products," said Leonard Garden. "ACA continues to encourage large buyers to work more directly with African processors, supporting their efforts to improve the quality of kernels exported to Western markets and elsewhere.”

The Steering Committee meeting of the Global Cashew Council also took place during the INC Conference. The discussions, presided over by Mr. Pino Calcagni, INC Vice Chairman, centered around committee structure, world cashew supply, and research on the health profile of cashew. The Global Cashew Council commissioned a study in 2012 on the effect of cashew consumption on diabetes and the heart, and these findings should be published this year.

The presence of African processors and key investors in African processing at INC indicate the growing importance and recognition achieved by cashew stakeholders represented by ACA. The INC Conference also provided for ACA to convene with its Global Development Alliance partners, including Kraft Foods, Intersnack, Red River Foods, and Olam.

ACA and GDA Partner representatives from Kraft, Intersnack, Olam, and Red River Foods

“We considered it highly desirable to have a strong organization promoting the case of African cashews; the blueprint for such an organization would then be the INC,” reflected Arie Endendjik, ACA Advisory board member and Purchasing Director of Intersnack, on the company’s early commitment to ACA. “We are convinced that a strong industry body will bring a lot of benefits to the industry, the more while this industry is quite immature.”