Olam International is investing $61 million to build a cocoa plant in Indonesia to meet what the company believes will be a significant growth in demand from Asia. The plant will be the company’s fifth cocoa production facility and its first in Asia. Trial production has begun at Olam’s 60,000 ton capacity operation in Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa growing country. The International Cocoa Organization forecasts that cocoa grinding will increase 4% in Africa, 3% in Asia, 2% in Europe and 1% in North America in 2014 as companies increasingly move their grinding operations to cocoa growing countries to take advantage of lower labor costs. Indonesia has seen a significant expansion of cocoa grinding operations recently. Cargill is opening a cocoa plant in east Java this year with an annual capacity of 70,000 tons and Barry Callebaut, the Swiss chocolate giant opened a $33 million plant on the island of Sulawesi last year with a capacity of 30,000 tons.
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