The new 70% Ransiki, Indonesia bar is our first to be crafted with Indonesian cocoa beans, and those beans come from a cooperative that’s empowering the local community through cocoa production. The result is a distinctive bar — we taste notes of chocolate-covered raisin, yogurt, and toasted almond — with a rich backstory. We sat down with Ron (our Cocoa Sourcing Manager), Febriani Sumbung of Ebier Suth Cokran, and Dejan Borisavljevic of Biji Kakao Trading to discuss Ransiki’s evolving cacao history: 


Febri and Dejan, what’s one thing you’d like people to know about the town of Ransiki?

Febri: Ransiki is a story of resilience and transformation. Ransiki is a place where the community has come together to revive a rich legacy, creating a beacon of hope for sustainable agriculture. We hope that the revival of Ransiki cocoa will represent not just economic growth but also the preservation of heritage, culture, and the environment for future generations. 

Dejan: I think Ransiki just represents everything that Indonesia has to offer — it’s a hidden gem. It combines all this excitement and wonder that one should feel about Indonesia. 


Cocoa cooperative Ebier Suth Cokran rehabilitated 200 hectares of abandoned cacao farmland. How did that land come to be abandoned? 

Febri: Ransiki had a cacao farm covering more than 1,688 hectares beginning in the 1980s. Villagers were trained to become skilled in cacao farming, fermenting, drying, and processing. It became a very successful plantation, producing more than 1,000 tons of dried beans per year and supplying for global brands. But in 1996, the plantation was taken over by a joint venture between an Indonesian and a Malaysian company. With indications of financial mismanagement, operational challenges due to over-expansion, and market fluctuations, the company went bankrupt in 2006. This led to 600 farmers losing a critical source of their farming income and livelihood. The farm was abandoned from 2006 until 2017. 


What were the toughest parts of rehabilitating that farmland?

Febri: There were a lot of challenges. When we started the rehabilitation process, we did a tree-counting survey and found that, within 150 to 200 hectares, roughly 400 cacao trees per hectare were alive, so we needed to add 450 more trees to reach 850 per hectare. One of the challenges was to prune and rejuvenate the existing cacao trees. 

Dejan: A lot of the trees hadn’t been pruned for such a long time, so it was more economical to cut down the trees and graft them to grow new trees. When you have an old plantation, you have two options: Either pull out the roots and start from the seedling, which takes a long time, or leave the roots of the old tree if it’s healthy enough, and cut a chupon. When you have a seedling, you have these baby trees, so you basically graft or grow them together, into the root of the old tree. This allows the farmers to rejuvenate the plantation in a much shorter period of time. It’s quite an amazing way of doing this.

The other thing that makes the rehabilitation unique is the village lies in a buffer zone. Ebier Suth is part of the green-economy project. It’s protecting the land from any sort of illegal deforestation. The government has made that a main focus.


How did you both get involved in cocoa production?

Febri: I work with Ebier Suth Cokran, a community-driven startup in Ransiki, West Province, in the South Manokwari district. We are focused on revitalizing the 1,200-hectare dormant cocoa plantation through a regenerative agroforestry system. This business is owned by the community through a cooperative structure. Those in the cooperative were originally workers of PT Cokran, the once thriving cocoa plantation that collapsed. Former workers united to revive it to build back the prosperity in the community. I’m on one of the Cokran teams. I handle marketing, communications, systems, and certification for organic Rainforest Alliance. 

I was born and raised here in Ransiki and witnessed the glory days of the chocolate plantation, producing beans with a truly unique flavor. This legacy inspired me. I left Ransiki to pursue higher education, to become a civil engineer, and returned in 2017 and committed to joining the team. We received support from the local government, driven to restore the land and find nature-based solutions to transform the community with skills and the capacity for development. We want to bring back the economic prosperity that this plantation once provided. Our enterprise’s name, Ebier Suth Cokran, comes from the local tribe language and the restoration of Ransiki cocoa.

Dejan: My wife is Indonesian. I worked in finance for almost 15 years, in banking for Citigroup in the U.K. I quit my job in 2018. My wife and I traveled for a few months across Indonesia. I was looking for something outside finance. I was looking into rare spices, and by serendipity I met a professor in Thailand who suggested I look into cacao. I did some research back home in England, then went off on a field trip in early 2019 for two months. I met around 30 producers, and started my business with four different ones, including the team in Ransiki. 

How did Ebier Suth and Biji Kakao Trading begin working together? 

Febri: When we first met Dejan in 2018, he was living in the UK and explained his passion for introducing Indonesian cocoa to the global market. Our relationship began with a shared admiration for the heritage and uniqueness of Ransiki cocoa beans.

Dejan: The people here are amazing, which I think you can taste in the product as well. It’s always spot on. There’s just this real passion for producing great cocoa and continuously learning as well. They got a Cacao of Excellence Award in Amsterdam last year. It’s a great partnership, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for the team. 


How much cocoa does the farm produce?

Febri: We have rehabilitated 150 hectares, but it’s not fully rehabilitated yet. We target our production to be 550 kilograms per hectare per year, but we are still at 200 kilograms per hectare per year. We produce around 40 to 45 tonnes per year of dried beans. We still need another two to three years to reach the target max yield of 550 kilograms. Our plan is to increase the output gradually from 800–900 to 1,200 hectares. 


How many local Papuans does Ebier Suth employ? 

Febri: Ebier Suth Cokran employs around 150 people, which includes management, the field and processing team, logistics, and security.


What other craft chocolate makers are using Ransiki’s beans? 

Dejan: Some really good Indonesian chocolate makers, like Pipiltin Cocoa. Probably around 20 to 30 craft chocolate makers in Europe and Russia. 

Ron: PLAQ in France makes a delicious high-percentage bar using Ransiki beans.


Any other makers in the U.S.? 

Dejan: Dandelion is the first U.S. maker to source these beans. I met Greg (Dandelion’s Chocolate “Sourcerer”) in 2019, the first time I exhibited our beans. I asked him if he would be kind enough to try them. I gave him a box and thought he would never call back. Then of course, COVID hit as well. Funny enough, probably 12 months later an email came from Ron saying Dandelion did take the time to test the beans, and from all the samples you loved the Ransiki beans. 

Ron: We did! The beans achieved one of the highest scores we’ve seen. Greg then visited Ransiki in March of 2022 to meet the team and begin building a connection.

Dejan: We appreciate that you like the beans. Having someone like Dandelion use the beans is gonna be a massive halo. I’m a cheerleader for these beans of course, but I’m also a gatekeeper for chocolate makers. The production is still quite limited, and we want to grow this organically. We have to be selective. The last 12 to 18 months have been challenging for sourcing cocoa, here in Europe as well as with our existing origins. We’re trying to keep our clients supplied, and that’s our main focus.


What role has the Indonesian government played in relation to this renewed focus on cacao?

Dejan: The government owns the land, but the operating company and the management are private companies, so it’s run like a private business. The focus is on efficiency and sustainability, and the government can ensure they’re preserving the land and helping the local community. 

Febri: In 2017, when we established a co-op structure, we were supported financially by the local government of Ransiki. Since that time, the local government has maintained its support by making financial contributions to help cover our operational expenses. The provincial government and ministries levels also provide the necessary facilities and infrastructure, as well as technical assistance. In addition, we’ve secured grants from the Rabo Foundation and a Singaporean financier to build capacity and support rehabilitation. We need more capital to complete the full rehabilitation and strengthen the team.


What’s next? Does Ebier Suth have plans to continue the rehabilitation?

Dejan: The idea is to rejuvenate the land back to 1,000 hectares, and as part of that they’re working on organic certification and on planting other crops that you would have in a dynamic agroforestry. That’s better for income and for restoring the soil as well. You can work without any chemical fertilizers, making the plantation and the cacao trees more sustainable to any pests and diseases. 

Febri: With a dynamic agroforestry system, we plant cacao trees with other native trees. Dynamic agroforestry uses a variety of native trees as shade trees for ecological balance and enhancing biodiversity on the farm. We also plant turmeric, ginger, bananas, and cassava, which are expected to become value-added commodities.


What challenges lie ahead? 

Febri: Years of neglect after using different synthetic inputs degraded the soil and stressed the cocoa trees. It’s a great challenge to boost productivity in the rehabilitated area. We had to do a lot of intensive restoration to make the soil fertile again. Implementing the regenerative agroforestry practice has required convincing our field workers to adopt this new method. In Ransiki, most cocoa farmers have used chemicals and synthetic fertilizers to increase productivity, and our field workers are heavily influenced by this paradigm. We had to convince them that our method would work, but we needed time for the shadow trees and newly planted cacao seedlings to grow. The field workers are not patient. The community wants to see results. It’s been a challenge to convince them. 

Securing sufficient funding to reach the break-even point is a primary challenge. Additionally, there is the challenge of increasing the capacity of the management and field teams, not to mention our production. This cacao-based dynamic agroforestry initiative is unparalleled in its size.

Ron: All of the producers we work with practice agroforestry as part of good farm management, but the amount of land that Ebier Suth is working to rehabilitate is particularly large. It’s an impressive undertaking.

Dejan: We work with a team in Brazil, part of the Cabruca Cooperativa, one of the very few that grow under dynamic agroforestry conditions. It’s a certification called Demeter, the old goddess of fertility, but it’s even more challenging than organic. The plantations are also rather small. What makes the Ransiki team and the setup so unique as well, is the sheer size of this dormant land. Because usually most of the cocoa you, Dandelion, source, comes from smallholder farmers. So you have all these farmers with one to three hectares of land. But here in Ransiki it’s almost like a private estate but with a community perspective, so you can create the scale and consistency of the beans. But dynamic agroforestry — it’s not something you can do in five or 10 years. 

Febri: It takes time to convince the field workers, but I think at some point we’ll get there. For example, we planted bananas, and the benefit that our field workers see from this setup is that they can get free bananas for meals, and they’re happy with that. Then when we plant a native fruit tree like matoa, they ask us What is that? and I say this is a native tree we plant around our plantation, and it has fruit you can eat or sell. The matoa tree also provides useful nutrients and will function as a shadow tree, just as the bananas are useful as shadow trees for the young cacao seedlings. So I think it takes time, but we will get there.


Dejan: Indonesia has a special place in my heart. I really feel strongly for the country, and I can see that there are a lot of great potential producers. Great things lie ahead. 

Agreed. Thank you so much, Febri and Dejan.