Ecuador
CECAO
Classic Nacional Ecuador flavor profile with high impact and traceability. These beans are both Fair for Life and organic certified.
2025 Data - Product
Quality: Ultra Premium
Flavor: Milk Chocolate, Pecan, Hibiscus
Fermentations Style: Cascading Boxes
Drying Style: Raised beds with a roof. drying from 3 to 6 days, depending on weather conditions. 1 day for artificial drying if needed, Heat exchangers are used to avoid contamination.
Quality Practices: Healthy beans reception only. Cacao with disease and excessive external debris is rejected. Measurement of humidity content previous to packaging for export. Weekly cut test and sensory testing by the associations. Pesticides testing in organic cacao lots prior selling.
Certifications: Organic
2025 Data - Planet
Crops that are used for intercropping: Fruits, forest and musaceae (bananas).
Environmental practices: Planting of perennial species, such as fruit and timber trees
Organic hectares cultivated: 3,647
Average percent of shade of cacao farms: 25-85%
Distance of producer to facility (km): 200
Distance to port (km): 42
Ocean freight CO2kgs per MT (US): 80
Ocean Freight CO2kgs per MT (EU): 159
2025 Data - People
Trainings conducted: Organic cocoa agronomy, grafting, nursery management, efficient microorganism capture and preparation, cocoa agroforestry management, measures to reduce cocoa contamination, production costs, artisanal chocolate making, administration and finance, industrial safety, and first aid.
Producers purchased from: 1,142
Female producers: 258
Organic producers: 1,142
Total # of producers trained: 800
Full time employees: 68
Full time female employees: 18
Part time employees: 34
Part time female employees: 9
Average farm size (ha): 3.97
Average sales per producer (dry kg): 1,145
Average annual cacao revenue per producer: $8,429
CECAO is based in Guayaquil, Ecuador, with operations across south central Ecuador through their 10 community-based member associations that comprise a network of over 1,100 producers.
Through the CECAO Foundation, all associations receive technical assistance and additional services. CECAO works closely with its producer network to focus on productivity of farms, quality of post-harvest, and intercropping of other fruit species for ecological and economic diversity. CECAO is committed to paying farmers fair prices, improving cacao productivity, maintaining high quality and consistency, at high volumes. Each association has their own managers who are responsible for traceability, producer network and relations, buying, and post harvest. Each association has its own centralized fermentation and drying facility that processes all of the producer network’s cacao in that region. CECAO pre-finances 100% of the associations, which provides the working capital that the associations use to buy from producers. In return, the associations sell exclusively to CECAO. There are 1,142 registered producers across the network, of which over 20% are women.
CECAO is based in Guayaquil, Ecuador, with operations across south central Ecuador through their 10 community-based member associations that comprise a network of over 1,100 producers.
Through the CECAO Foundation, all associations receive technical assistance and additional services. CECAO works closely with its producer network to focus on productivity of farms, quality of post-harvest, and intercropping of other fruit species for ecological and economic diversity. CECAO is committed to paying farmers fair prices, improving cacao productivity, maintaining high quality and consistency, at high volumes. Each association has their own managers who are responsible for traceability, producer network and relations, buying, and post harvest. Each association has its own centralized fermentation and drying facility that processes all of the producer network’s cacao in that region. CECAO pre-finances 100% of the associations, which provides the working capital that the associations use to buy from producers. In return, the associations sell exclusively to CECAO. There are 1,142 registered producers across the network, of which over 20% are women.
2025 CECAO Farmgate price
$7.36 USD
This is the actual price paid to the cacao producer for their product (typically on a per kg or per lb basis) when they sell it to the first buyer.
Farmgate price is often paid for "wet" or fresh cacao, recently harvested and scooped out of cracked pods for sale. Wet cacao loses 60-70% of its weight during fermentation and drying, typically reaching 7-8% humidity before it is sold.
Uncommon calculates farmgate price for each cacao supplier based on the specific weight loss conversion percentage provided to us by the supplier, and we report farmgate price on a per kg dried equivalent basis for all cacao beans we source.
Pictured is Estella Dutan Barerra on her farm.
2025 CECAO Association price
$7.58 USD
This is the price the exporter pays the association for cacao.
In some cases in our supply chain there is an organized group of producers that aggregate cacao and sell it to an exporter.
2025 CECAO FOB price
$10 USD
This is the price paid by Uncommon to our partners for cacao transported and loaded onto a ship for export.
Uncommon then covers all of the costs of shipping, freight charges, insurance, import, domestic logistics, warehouse ingestion, customs and duties.
Free on board (FOB) is an international shipping term that represents the seller's responsibility for bringing the cacao over the rails of the export ship.
2025 CECAO Average sales price
$14.18 USD
This is the weighted average price per kg for cacao sold to the premium & ultra premium chocolate makers who purchased it during this year from Uncommon Cacao.
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Flavor Profile
Bittersweet Chocolate, Peanut, Honeysuckle & Lavender
We believe that the difference between traceability and transparency is published and verifiable data for each and every step in our supply chain.
