World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) is pleased to welcome Belgium-based SIAT, N.V., as their newest member. On joining WCF, company Chairman & CEO Pierre Vandebeeck said, “Through its Biotech subsidiary Deroose Plants (DRP), [SIAT] is active in the production of high-value planting material through tissue-culture and cloning for tree-crops, including cocoa, and very interested to collaborate with WCF and all its stakeholders, to contribute to the scaling-up efforts for large-scale production of planting material, obtained through different processes and modalities, including large-scale nurseries, hardening green-houses, tissue culture with somatic embryogenesis, gene editing, etc.
At this stage, we could describe ourselves as a small scale value chain member, positioned “very upstream” of the cocoa value-chain as inputs provider.
We believe that combining our Biotech expertise with the SIAT group’s core-business (plantations, smallholder farming, and agro-processing skills) would widen the scope of WCF’s capacity to offer solutions to the cocoa sector world-wide.”
Learn more about SIAT at www.siat-group.com.
