BeanFlux for cacao trading companies
You receive cacao from dozens of suppliers every month, with fermentation and moisture levels that vary lot by lot. You negotiate contracts with a differential over ICCO against inventory that is still drying. And your international buyers ask you for fine flavor cacao traceability from the origin. Today that operation lives across spreadsheets that don’t talk to each other. BeanFlux is the operational platform that connects it.
See a demo in 20 minutes →How a cacao trading company operates
From the outside it looks simple: buy cacao beans and sell them. But whoever runs a cacao trading company knows that each lot arrives with a different fermentation level, with moisture that must be measured, with impurities that affect the yield. That the price is not negotiated against the FNC but against the ICCO reference. That international buyers demand fine flavor cacao traceability lot by lot. And that all of it has to reconcile against open contracts with different differentials.
Fermentation and moisture
Each lot is evaluated by fermentation level, moisture percentage and impurities. Those variables determine the purchase price and the bean classification — and they change from farm to farm, from harvest to harvest.
Fine flavor cacao
Colombia is recognized for its fine flavor cacao. The classification is determined lot by lot, and international buyers require it with traceability from the origin to the shipment.
ICCO vs FNC: two references, two logics
Cacao is traded against the ICCO reference, not against the FNC base like coffee. Contracts have different differentials, hedges work differently, and the margin calculation changes completely.
Lots by quality
Inventory is not an aggregated number. They are lots with fermentation, moisture, origin, bean size and classification. Blending lots without control destroys value — and without a system, they get blended.
That operation repeats every day, every harvest. And in most cacao trading companies, all that information lives scattered across spreadsheets, notebooks and the warehouse manager’s memory. When someone leaves, the knowledge leaves with that person.
A concrete example: a lot with 85% fermentation, 7.5% moisture and impurities below 1% is classified as premium fine flavor. In a contract with a differential of +300 USD/t over ICCO, each ton of that lot is worth 300 dollars more than conventional cacao. If a warehouse error blends that lot with conventional before dispatch, those 300 USD/t evaporate — and you won’t know until the contract settlement, when it’s already too late.
The operational domains
Your cacao operation, digitized
Each module reflects a real process of your cacao trading company — with the terminology, the calculations and the flows you already know.
Cacao purchases
Purchase records with fermentation level, moisture and impurities evaluated on receipt. Yield factor calculated automatically from configurable tables. Lot traceability from the farm to the sales contract.
Inventory by lot and quality
Each lot with fermentation, moisture, origin and classification — fine flavor or conventional. Available vs committed against contracts. Real-time inventory by warehouse, with drying movements, transfers and dispatches recorded.
Contracts with ICCO reference
Sales contracts at fixed price, differential over ICCO and forward. Open position in real time — how much you must deliver, at what price, against which reference. Lot assignment by quality and buyer requirements.
Quality and classification
Cacao evaluation on receipt: fermentation, moisture, impurities, bean size. Classification of fine flavor vs conventional cacao. Factor tables configurable by buying point and by supplier.
Margins per operation
Purchase cost captured from receipt — fermentation, yield, transport, expenses. Margin calculated against the sales price of the ICCO-referenced contract. Profitability by lot, by quality, by period.
Drying, impurities and yield
Cacao arrives wet. The moisture and impurities percentage determines the yield factor — how much actually remains after drying. That calculation defines the real purchase price per net kilo.
Contract management is the critical module for a cacao trading company: see how contract management works in BeanFlux — with fixed price, differential and forward, open position in real time and lot assignment by quality.
If you operate coffee and cacao, you don’t need two systems
Coffee and cacao operations share the same operational structure: purchases from producers, inventory by lot, sales contracts, margins per operation. But the variables are different — coffee is evaluated by yield factor against the FNC base; cacao, by fermentation and moisture against the ICCO reference.
BeanFlux manages both products on the same platform. Each one with its flows, its factor tables, its price references and its traceability requirements. Without duplicating systems. Without duplicating work.
- Fermentation, moisture, impurities
- ICCO reference
- Fine flavor cacao
- Traceability by origin
- Yield factor, parchment quality
- FNC base + differential
- Wet and dry parchment
- Traceability by farm
Frequently asked questions
What cacao trading companies ask us
Does BeanFlux understand the difference between fine flavor cacao and conventional cacao?
Yes. The system classifies each lot by fermentation level, moisture, impurities and type — fine flavor or conventional. That classification travels with the lot from receipt to the sales contract, and is recorded for any buyer who requires it, including international buyers who ask for traceability from the origin.
Do contracts handle the ICCO reference?
BeanFlux lets you create sales contracts with fixed price, differential over ICCO and forward. The open position updates in real time — how much you must deliver, at what price, against which reference. The margin is calculated automatically against the purchase cost of each assigned lot.
Can I manage coffee and cacao in the same system?
That’s exactly what it was designed for. BeanFlux manages coffee and cacao on the same platform, each product with its own flows, factor tables and price references. Coffee is evaluated by yield factor against the FNC base; cacao, by fermentation and moisture against the ICCO reference. Without duplicating systems.
How does quality control work for cacao?
On receipt, each lot is evaluated by fermentation level, moisture percentage, impurities and bean size. The factor tables are configurable by buying point. The result determines the purchase price and the lot classification — which is then used to assign inventory to contracts according to buyer requirements.
See it working with your cacao operation
If you run a cacao trading company in Colombia and want to see how your operation looks inside BeanFlux, we show you the system in 20 minutes. Purchases with fermentation, inventory by lot, contracts with ICCO reference, margin per dispatch — with data you recognize.
Schedule a demo →20 minutes · No sales presentations