What seems ordinary to us today was once a groundbreaking discovery.

If you are looking into the history of sunflower oil, your search will lead you to Belgorod's Alekseyevka. It was here, in the late 1820s, that famous Daniil Bokarev produced the world's first sunflower oil. But this small town is a pioneer not only in sunflower processing. One of the new technologies has been mastered here just recently.

Starting with traditional Russian crops like sunflower, soybean, rapeseed, and flax, domestic technology engineers have learned to work with exotic ones as well. Back in the early 2000s, EFKO was one of the first in the country to start processing oil palm. Then, in 2019, it became a pioneer in processing shea nuts. Now it is time for another oilseed crop.

After setting up the supply and logistics for shea nuts, essential for making complex confectionery ingredients, we advanced by launching a new pilot line for cocoa bean processing.

The finest cocoa beans are brought from West Africa to be made into top-quality Russian cocoa products. Every stage, from fruit selection to cleaning and roasting, is verified with maximum precision.

"Cocoa is a rather capricious product. Its quality and taste depend heavily on the weather, the region of growth, and the drying and storage of the beans. Therefore, a separate focus of our work was the high-quality organization of raw material procurement – selecting beans for the required quality and taste to create top-level cocoa products similar to the world's leading producers," Anna Lebedenko, Director of Cocoa Products at EFKO's Oils and Fats Division, explains. "Currently, the project operates as our own R&D for developing new flavors and ready-made solutions for the company's needs and for end consumers. But the very possibility of supplying our production facility in the Tula region with our own cocoa products is a technological success and a new step towards strengthening food security."

The pilot line is located in Alekseyevka on the production sites that previously housed the mayonnaise production facility, which was moved to EFKO's new site in the Tula region. Investments in the cocoa processing project amounted to over 80 million rubles.