EN
The crop was always Ivorian. The value is only now becoming Ivorian too.
Côte d’Ivoire grows more cashew than any country on earth. For most of the last decade it shipped that crop away unshelled, to be processed in Asia. That is changing faster than almost any agro-industrial shift in West Africa — and it is the reason this company exists.
Ten years that changed an industry.
In 2016 almost the whole Ivorian harvest left the country in its shell. Within a decade the state made local processing an industrial policy, and the curve bent. This is the wave Lhacienda Corp is built to ride — not to invent.
6.2% processed at home
Almost the entire crop was exported unshelled. Shelling, peeling, grading and packing — the labour-intensive, margin-carrying steps — happened in India and Vietnam.
21% processed at home
344,000 tonnes shelled in Côte d’Ivoire. Capacity had more than quadrupled in seven years.
37 plants, 830,000 t capacity
Kernel export sales rose 67% in a single year, and the country became the world’s second-largest kernel exporter after Vietnam. Ten further plants are under way.
More than 50%, the national target
The state target for the share of the crop processed on Ivorian soil. Meeting it needs operators who can sell the kernel, not just shell it.
Sources: Government of Côte d’Ivoire; Ecofin Agency. The 2030 figure is the national policy target, not a forecast.
The scarce thing is no longer capacity.
When a country adds more shelling capacity in two years than in the previous decade, the bottleneck moves. It moves to the end of the chain that West African processors have historically been furthest from: the European buyer.
Capacity is being solved
830,000 tonnes of installed capacity against a 1.15 million tonne crop. The question is no longer whether the nut can be shelled in Côte d’Ivoire.
Market access is not
A European roaster buys on specification, documentation and lead time. Shelling a tonne and selling it to a demanding buyer in Hamburg are two different businesses.
Jobs follow processing
More than thirty plants opened in 2024 alone, creating over 15,000 direct jobs — around two thirds to seventy per cent of them held by women.
We are not first, and we do not pretend to be.
The numbers above are not our argument that origin processing is a clever idea. They are the proof that it is national policy and that it is working. Thirty-seven operators got there before us.
Our case is narrower and, we think, harder to copy: one operator answering for the goods on both ends of the corridor — from the buying station in Gontougo to the pallet at PLAZA, Zaragoza, with the lot reference and the paperwork travelling the whole way. Most origin processors stop at the port in Abidjan. We are building the half that comes after.
- Margin
- Does a European hub earn more than it costs? Our model is in the data room.
- Competition
- What stops an existing plant from adding a European agent? Our answer is control of the chain, not the warehouse.
- Execution
- Who has commissioned a line like this before? The team page answers this — see Partners for the file.
- Timing
- Are we entering as margins compress? Discussed openly, with the risks we see, on the Partners page.
Where these figures come from.
Public reporting, not our own estimates. Where sources differ — the 2025 crop is put between 1.15 and 1.5 million tonnes depending on the count — we quote the more conservative figure.
The policy is set. The capacity is arriving. The chain is still broken at the European end.
That gap is the investment.