Cocoa Liquor, Butter, & Powder Production

This project recommends a design for a cocoa processing plant to produce cocoa liquor, powder, and butter from fermented cocoa beans, in accordance with US Patent 6,066,350. The recommended design minimizes the use of external utilities by optimizing various heat integration strategies. The plant has a capacity of 120,000 tonnes/year and will be located in Tema, Ghana. The proposed design yields 25,000 tonnes/year of alkalized cocoa liquor with 54% fat, 52,000 tonnes/year of cocoa butter, 36,000 tonnes/year of 3% fat alkalized cocoa powder, and 9,000 tonnes/year of below 0.5% fat alkalized cocoa powder. The cocoa butter and powders made in this process are of Food Grade quality and are compliant with FDA regulations, and have less than 1 PPM residual solvent concentrations. A total permanent investment of $19M is required. Despite this, the process has an estimated IRR of 33.5% and an NPV of $29M. It is recommended that the company bring this plant into operation and commence additional research, with emphasis in the cocoa powder market, and the effectiveness of solvent extraction and removal.