4 Nov 2021

PRONATEC / YACAO - Organic and Fair Trade cocoa from the Dominican Republic

YACAO is a subsidiary of PRONATEC and supplies us with organically cultivated and fairly traded cocoa from the Dominican Republic. YACAO was founded by PRONATEC with local partners in 1999 and is managed today by Werner Schafroth (Finances), Roman Hipper (Operations) and Andreas Schmidiger (Services).

Today YACAO employs around 100 permanent and up to 100 additional seasonal workers during peak harvesting time. The aim of YACAO is to produce high-quality cocoa for export and as such to help smallholders to earn a better income. YACAO is present in all important growing regions in the Dominican Republic. The cocoa beans are fermented, dried and stored in three of YACAO’s own processing centres in Navarrete, Yamasá and Medina as well as with a processing partner in El Seibo.