One Million Cocoa Trees: Growing an Industry That Didn't Exist

Cambodia has no tradition of growing cocoa. That didn't stop Dr. Hay Ly Eang from quietly planting the country's first cocoa trees in Ratanakiri province in 2014, betting that a Khmer chocolate was worth a decade of experimentation to find out whether the crop could adapt to Cambodian soil and climate at all.

It could. What grew out of that early planting became Confirel's "Cocoa Plan," built on three commitments: reach 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of dried cocoa beans a year to supply a real chocolate-processing line and export market; give farmers technical support alongside stable prices and guaranteed buyers, not just seedlings; and actively bring cocoa cultivation to more of Ratanakiri's communities.

In 2024, Confirel installed its own chocolate production line and partnered with Maison Marou, the Vietnam-based chocolate maker known across the region, to turn Ratanakiri cocoa and Kampong Speu palm sugar into chocolate made entirely in Cambodia, banana, coconut, passion fruit and pepper among the local flavours. The point was never to export raw beans and let another country capture the value; the goal was to build the whole chain, from tree to bar, at home.

The project now carries a name bigger than its current size: One Million Cocoa Trees, a five-year goal Confirel has set itself, and a program the United Nations has cited as a flagship example of sustainable development. It is, in Dr. Hay's own words, an attempt to make Cambodia part of the map of Asian cocoa, starting from a crop the country had never grown before.