COCOA BUTTER AND CAKE YIELD PREDICTION FOR PRODUCTION PLANNING IN COCOA PROCESSING INDUSTRY

Abstract

Crushing of dried Cocoa beans and pressing of the paste that comes out of it, called “Cocoa Liquior” yields cocoa butter and cake. Both are of high economic value and boost the Internal Generated Revenue (IGR) of any Nation producing them. In planning for future production of butter and cake, there is need for a tool capable of predicting the quantity of butter and cake that can be gotten from any quantity of dried cocoa beans pushed into the processing plant. This study developed an empirical model which stands as a production decision support system (DSS) to determine net cocoa beans processed, cocoa nibs available for grinding into liquor, butter and cake yied from the mass of liquor pressed for production planning of cocoa processing in industry. The developed empirical model predicted total yield of 374.41 tonnes of liquor cocoa beans, out of which butter was 174.50 tonnes and cake was 200.28 tonnes when 522.30 tonnes through put was processed for six months, January to June 2015. The waste materials (beans, nibs, liquor, butter and cake), mass of shell removed, and the materials unprocessed left on the production line was 148.02 tonnes. The actual results collected from the factory floor for the same six months are: liquor yield 377.83 tonnes out of which butter was 175.59 tonnes, Cake 202.24 tonnes, the waste materials, mass of shell removed and the unprocessed left on the production line was 149.06 tonnes the efficiency of the model is 99.08% and the results correlation (r) is +1 this shows that both results have strong relation.