Finca Chocolat is not a typical farm, it's a unique 515-acre specialty cacao, timber, and spice farm in the Toledo District of Belize. Established in 2015, our aim is not only to provide superior quality products for our customers and a healthy return to our investors, but as importantly, to provide steady employment with an above average salary for our team, serve as an example of regenerative agriculture to our neighboring communities, and reforest land previously cleared for ranching.
We embrace an agroforestry model. We plant Salmwood, Barbajalote, and Rosewood trees to form a canopy in areas cleared by the former owner. Under this canopy of native hardwoods, we plant cacao as the midstory crop, with vanilla, turmeric, cardamom, and lemongrass as the understory crops. This creates a symbiotic relationship between the crops at Finca Chocolat, maximizes financial return per acre, improves soil health, creates a more natural environment for wildlife, and sequesters substantial amounts of carbon.
Finca Chocolat sold its first cacao locally in 2020, expanded sales to the United States in 2021, to Europe in 2022, and, with the help of BelTraide, added Asia in 2023. In 2024, we established a distribution agreement for the U.S. with an established player in the specialty cacao market to provide on-demand fulfillment for our customers. As our production increases in the coming years, we aim to establish similar relationships in Europe and Asia.
As we operate in the fine-flavor sector of the cacao industry, Finca Chocolat is not just surviving, but thriving. We are able to command exceptional pricing with or without the lack of supply recently experienced in cacao worldwide. With no debt, customers on 4 continents, and enough trees in the ground today that when they all mature we will be highly profitable, we are a secure investment. We will plant an additional 15,000+ trees for the next 4-5 years until all available land is fully utilized. We are well-positioned to capitalize on the current market and are increasing production yearly as more trees mature.
While delighted with existing demand and pricing for our cacao, we are not sitting idly waiting for trees to mature. To that end, we registered a 506(c) Private Placement Offering with the U.S. SEC in 2023 and are selling shares in Finca Chocolat. In the last 18 months, we have used these funds to: increase our fermentation capacity by 600%, expand the number of neighboring farms we work with from 20 to 100+, increase our drying capacity by 150%, add storage for an additional 20+ tons of cacao and built and outfitted a distillation facility for Lemongrass oil.
Looking to the future, processing needs to happen at origin in Belize rather than in North America and Europe for Finca Chocolat to fully achieve its financial and ESG goals. In addition to using 506(c) funds to rapidly plant out additional acreage, our goal is to build a processing facility in southern Belize not just for Finca Chocolat and cacao in the near future but also for neighboring farms and additional crops in the mid-term.
Finca Chocolat is working to become a vertically integrated supplier of cocoa derivatives - nibs, butter, powder, mass, and couverture at the source rather than passing that profit to factories currently performing this role in parts of the world where cacao is not grown. Shortening this supply chain increases margins substantially, thereby allowing Finca Chocolat to reinvest at a faster rate, provide more jobs for the community, and work with a broader range of neighboring farms to increase their returns as well.
