The center, set to become the largest facility of its kind in the country when it begins operations in 2019, will be built on 95.2 hectares (ha). Of the figure, 70-ha will be allocated for cocoa plantations to develop high-productivity and pest-resistant cocoa varieties, while the rest will be used for supporting facilities, such as a post-harvest manufacturing plant and laboratory.

Frank Mars, a member of the board of directors of Mars Inc., said the R&D center would help the company boost its development of clones and improve its partner farmers’ practices to increase cocoa yields from less than 1 ton per ha to more than three times over the next 10 years.

“I’ve been fortunate to travel and work with Indonesian farmers over the past 15 years and have seen how good they can be with the proper education, training, planting and fertilizing material,” he said in his remarks during the groundbreaking ceremony. “The world will need more cocoa in the future and there’s no reason it cannot be Indonesian cocoa.”

The R&D center will be Mars’ second facility in the country and its fifth globally. Its first local facility is situated in Tarengge, East Luwu regency, South Sulawesi. Other facilities are in Brazil, Ecuador and the United States.

Running its business in Indonesia since 1996, the world’s largest chocolate producer known for M&M’s and Snickers, Milky Way and Dove bars, runs several grinding and processing facilities in South Sulawesi that annually turn 24,000 tons of cocoa beans into intermediary input, such as liquor, powder and butter. Most of them are used for Mars’ global operation.

Efforts to boost the productivity of the world’s third-biggest cocoa producer are timely as the country has long grappled with gradually dwindling output.

Data from the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) shows that Indonesia’s cocoa production has dropped by 47 percent over the past seven years to 290,000 tons in 2016-2017.

Speaking in the same event, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said despite the current situation, the country still had the potential to raise its cocoa production given the availability of land, farmers and favorable climate.

“The sole necessary attempt is to enhance our technology. Through research, experiments, dissemination of knowledge, application of fertilizer and usage of good seeds, we can reach our goal to climb to number two and then one,” he said.

Kalla also suggested that the program on increasing cocoa production had to concentrate on four provinces in Sulawesi, namely West Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi and Central Sulawesi, which altogether account for around 60 percent of the domestic output.

South Sulawesi Governor Syahrul Yasin Limpo pointed out that seeds, weeds and post-harvest activities remained the major obstacles hampering the growth of the cocoa industry in the province.

“We expect the center to generate research on cocoa derivatives and end-products so that we can develop a big-scale cocoa industry in South Sulawesi,” he said, adding that the cocoa farming could still be expanded into 12 regencies in the province, from only eight regencies at present.

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