MILWAUKEE – Executives from Ghana’s Niche Cocoa Industry along with state and federal officials recently unveiled plans to establish the first manufacturing facility in North America to be located in Franklin, Wis., a suburb of the greater Milwaukee metropolitan area. Niche Cocoa is the largest private global cocoa processing company in Ghana, and its presence in North America would mark the largest food and beverage investment in US history by an African-based company.
The cocoa company plans to lease an existing 44,000-square-foot building where they will hire 24 workers to process about 1,200 containers of cocoa beans imported into Ghana each year, which will then be turned into cocoa powder, finished chocolate and cocoa liquor. sold to other manufacturing facilities for chocolate, ice cream and baking. The company expects the facility to be fully operational by January 2023.
“Niche is exactly the type of business we want in our region and can uniquely support,” said Rebecca Gries, vice president of corporate attraction and expansion for M7, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC). “The company adds to a strong group of global food and beverage manufacturers that call our region home, a reflection of our strong business climate, strong manufacturing infrastructure and one of the nation’s largest concentrations of talented workers.”
WEDC helped recruit Niche Cocoa for the Milwaukee area, where the company plans to partner with the city’s Omanhene Cocoa Bean Co., which specializes in manufacturing bean-to-bar chocolate sourced entirely from Ghana, the world’s second-largest cocoa bean. . Ivory Coast, another West African country, is the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans.
“Together we are creating cocoa products and creating compelling jobs in the US and Ghana,” said Steve Wallace, founder of Omahene. “We’re proving that a country’s competitive advantages, combined with strategic global partnerships, can win results in unexpected places.”
The announcement also had the support of the federal government. Marisa Lago, the US Undersecretary for International Trade, hailed the partnership between the two nations as a symbolic opportunity for other international approaches.
“Niche Cocoa’s historic investment in Wisconsin is an unmistakable signal to companies in Africa and around the world that the United States is open for business,” said Ms. Lago.
