Cocoa beans are surrounded by a light shell that needs to be removed.
The winnowing process cracks the beans into small fragments and then gently blows the lighter shell away.
Our winnower is set to 5 layers of trays with each layer having smaller and smaller holes. On the initial layer the smaller fragments drop down as the vacuum sucks up only the lighter, larger shell pieces, leaving the cocoa nib pieces for us to make our chocolate with.
We work with many projects to repurpose the shell waste, including making it into compost, fuel, bricks, paper and decorations.
