TradeLink Cassava Project

We have been supplying Tapioca products for many, many years but this year we received important requests specifically for Organic Cassava Flour, a flour that can be used as a much more direct replacement for wheat flour in gluten free products as well as a world of other applications.

Our product development guys got onto it and quickly identified the main growing regions and where we could source organic product with a fully traceable supply chain.

It wasn’t easy, the journey took us through Asia, Africa and many parts of South America in our search for the ideal product. Its not only traceability, its quality of the root, humidity in the region, starch content, sustainability of supply amongst other details that make what seems to be a simple project a very complex one.

In this journey we stopped off at Brazil and added conventional cassava flour to our project, launching the first loads halfway through the year. We boast, along with our exclusive partners there, a production capacity of over 400mt per month the whole year round, and like usual, we source direct from the fields.

Our organic project is very close to coming to a full launch. Several tests have been done, including industrial runs by some very appreciated clients, and we are nearly there!

The organic plants in Sri Lanka are nearly ready for harvest where we will have 120mt per month of product. To complement Sri Lanka we are completing trials in another mill of South American product where we hope to be able to supply another 240mt per month of product.

Below are some pictures of the journey, trust you enjoy, and just a few fun facts about cassava are:

• It originates from South America. Cultivation of cassava started in Peru 4.000 years ago.
• It grows on fertile, well-drained, moist soil in areas that are frost-free.
• Cassava grows in the form of shrub that can reach 9 feet in height. It produces multiple light-green or reddish branches.
• Tuberous root of cassava consists of 4 to 8 individual tubers that grow at the base of the stem. They are usually 8 to 15 inches long and 1 to 4 inches wide. Thin brown bark covers whitish interior of root.
• Root of cassava is third richest source of carbohydrates (after rice and corn) in the world. Besides sugars, root of cassava contains vitamin C and vitamins of the B group and minerals such as calcium and phosphorus.
• Cassava takes between 6 and 8 months to cultivate but yields between 20,000kg and 30,000kg per hectare!

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