Our story in a Nutshell
In 2019 we celebrated our 10-year anniversary.
Organic and fair-trade cashews
Products
Anatrans is the leading cashew processor in Burkina Faso, focused on organic and fair-trade cashews. We aim to supply traceable, quality cashew kernels to our clients while shortening supply chains and adding value locally. We are BRC Global Standard certified for quality and food safety. Our factory and the farmers we work with are certified organic for European and American markets as well as Fair- Trade by FLO. It is our own full-time employees who train, support, and verify the organic farmers. We are a founding member of the Sustainable Nut Initiative and are audited for SMETA compliance on social issues.
Together we build win-win farm-factory linkages
Supply Chain Linkages
One of Anatrans’ aims is to offer international market access to the cashew farmers of Burkina Faso. We source cashew with over 3,000 farmers whom we, together with our partner FairMatch Support, provide with training on good agricultural practices, contract understanding, traceability, intercropping, apiculture, reuse of orchard products and organic and fair-trade certifications. Together we build win-win farm-factory linkages, develop a local sustainable supply chain and contribute to the elimination of the practice of shipping raw materials out of Africa for processing elsewhere.
Mostly cultivated by smallholders
Traceability
Unlike the cultivation of other nuts, cashew is mostly cultivated by smallholders. The product often changes hands several times before it reaches processing facilities outside Africa, making product traceability a challenge. Anatrans sources directly from farmer groups in Burkina Faso and has a strong focus on traceability of the final product to ensure customers can trace from which village a certain box of cashew originates. Together with the Sustainable Nut Initiative we pioneered traceability for cashew grown by African smallholders. We have continued to build upon this work in recent years and now have one of the most advanced working cashew traceability systems in place.
78% of the mass of the raw cashew nuts is not edible
By-products
77% of the mass of the raw cashew nuts is not edible. This represents a significant quantity of biomass for which there is currently no local market. We process the cashew shells to extract a liquid called Cashew Nut Shell Liquid (CNSL). This product is a biological substitute for petrochemical products. Together with several partners, Anatrans is actively supporting and conducting on site research to develop local markets for the CNSL and the remaining press cake. Anatrans already uses shells at a small scale for the thermal energy needs of the plant, but it is the ambition to turn biomass into electricity as well, so as to create a fully carbon neutral cashew processing facility.