Gourmet gardens
Gourmet Gardens, vanilla, cocoa & chilli, Uganda (producer)
Some of you may remember Gourmet Gardens as featured in QR back in 2012. This vanilla, cocoa and chilli co-operative is working with over 600 producers in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), through times of economic instability and unrest. We are pleased to bring you an update on the co-operative and how they are dealing with the challenges they face.
Gourmet Gardens have been a Shared Interest customer for seven years, receiving loans to finance their harvesting and processing, to assist them in trading vanilla and also to meet increased demand from buyers.
Operations Manager, Dr Clemens Fehr, said:
“We are very happy to have Shared Interest working with us for so many years. In the past they stood with us through difficult times, more recently they have enabled us to grow further and to expand the outgrower scheme."
DRIVEN BY PASSION IN HARMONY WITH NATURE
Dr Clemen's continued:
"In early 2018, we will shift our activities to a new factory, which is under construction near the river Nile.
“We are particularly proud that our cocoa is now used by some well-known chocolate makers like Blanxart in Spain, Georgia Ramon in Germany, A. Marin in France and Vanilla Bean in Japan. Similarly, our vanilla is found in the raw food chocolates of Lovechock from the Netherlands and Lifefood in the Czech Republic and in ice creams of Hansen Is and Social Food in Denmark.
“We want to expand direct marketing. It helps to add a lot of value to our vanilla and cocoa. As a result, we are in a position to pay better prices to farmers than most of our competitors. We are confident that by next year a premium big chocolate maker in St. Petersburg in Russia will have joined us.”
You can read the full story of Gourmet Gardens in QR 106.
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