Raw World Company & Soroken Plantation

At Raw World Company we're really excited to announce a partnership with Soroken Plantation and our first foray into the world of cacao.  We're looking forward to building a relationship that has the core values of Soroken Plantation at heart; empowering local farmers, enhancing local livelihoods, and establishing a sustainable future for Bougainvillean farmers.

RWC is looking forward to joining Soroken Plantation's journey towards rehabilitation and in turn watching that journey aid the recovery of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville's rich agricultural sector.  An agricultural sector that was decimated by civil unrest in the 1990's and more recently by the cocoa pod borer that destroyed a majority of farmers' cacao in the early 2000's.

Soraken is a village in North-Western Bougainville and the Soraken Plantation was initially set up as a copra plantation in 1913.  The plantation featured a 21 kilometre tramway system constructed in the 1920's with materials supplied by Robert Hudson Ltd Leeds.  Soraken was occupied by the Japanese in World War II and liberated in 1945 when the Australian 11th Brigade pushed north to take the Soraken Peninsula.

Today, Soroken Planatation has become a role model nursery in Papua New Guinea and a distribution hub for cocoa farmers on Bougainville.  The plantation has distributed over 108,000 trees and has has over 500 small block holders growing cacao within their own villages.  Their mantra of quality, consistency and reliability has led to a system of continuous education for local farmers from nursery to the drying of beans.  Quality Control Workshops teaching and enhancing farmers' skills and knowledge ensures farmers control the quality of their beans, but more importantly allows the farmer to see their importance in the full value chain of cacao from the farm to the world market.

At RWC we've engaged Trevor Smith from Metiisto Artisan Chocolate, a renowned bean to bar chocolate maker.  In September we've launched our initial two product lines; a 70% dark chocolate bar and a 55% dark milk chocolate bar.  From there we have another three products in the works; a coffee infused chocolate bar using our single origin Goroka espresso beans, toasted cacao nibs, and our single origin Goroka Peaberry coffee beans coated in luxurious Soroken dark chocolate.  We're looking to make great quality luxurious chocolate that showcases Papua New Guinean chocolate to the world!