Brazil nuts
The Brazil nut is a non-cultivated crop exclusively found in the rainforest. We source the nuts from an area of more than 15,000 square kilometres in the Juruena Region in Mato Grosso, Brazil.
They are collected from the forest ground by villagers living at the edge of and in the forest. The majority of gatherers stem from indigenous tribes and are united in the cooperative Coopavam which handles processing as well as exporting.
The nuts are cracked and sorted by size and grade directly on site.
ORIGIN: Brazil
THE PRODUCT: Organic shelled seeds with a creamy texture and mild, earthy flavour
GRADES: Large (80-11 kernels/lb) to super tiny (>220 kernels/lb)
VOLUMES: 100 MT kernels per year
CERTIFICATIONS: EU Organic
Producers and supply chain
Collected by 369 gatherers in the Juruena region in Mato Grosso, Brazil.
Organic, non-irrigated, harvested by hand – disclaimer: Brazil nuts cannot be cultivated but grow as part of an intact ecosystem in the rainforest. They are collected in the wild between December and March.
The nuts are dried for about 24 hours at 70 °C and undergo a first selection. They then receive a thermal treatment to facilitate breakage and shell removal, followed by a second selection. Finally, the kernels are dehydrated, sorted by quality and size and then packaged.
Purchasing directly from one Cooperative since 2020. Transport: lorry from Juruena to the port of Santos (Sao Paulo), in Brazil, then shipped by container ship to Antwerpen, by lorry to our warehouse in Nijkerk.
Coopavam
Coopavam is a cooperative founded in 2008 and located in the Mato Grosso state of Brazil. Since Brazil nuts collected in protected forest reserves are one of the most sustainable nuts, we have been paying gebana premiums to the Coopavam collectors since 2022.