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At the beginning of the year cashew nuts are harvested. The nuts are steamed in hot-water tanks at 5 bar and 100°C in the cooperative WOUOL's newly built processing plant. Once they have cooled down, they are split by hand. The heating of the nuts is necessary to loosen their shells. After steaming the nuts are sorted according to quality (whole, broken), and then dried separately. In the final stage of production the leftover bits of thin skin need to be removed from every single nut.
For drying, the mango varieties 'Amélie' and 'Brooks' are used and are ready to be picked from mid April. The laborious drying process of mangos is carried out in both the drying plants of WOUOL and TON. The fruit is packed, checked once again by gebana Afrique for potential shortcomings in quality and made ready for export. It is shipped from gebana Afrique's warehouse via Lomé.
In addition to the main products - mango and cashew - pineapples are dried at SE.TRA.PAL (January - May) and lemongrass, hibiscus, coconuts and papaya are processed at WOUOL.
gebana Afrique supports its partners by supplying advice on agricultural issues, improving processing methods and prefinancing processed products. It is also involved in the certification according to organic and fair trade standards.
Further Information about gebana Afrique | 
