Madagascar Spices
Madagascar Spices is a vanilla producer and farm in Andapa with a processing facility in Sambava. While the company was started by Dylan Randriamihaja in 2015 and began exporting directly to Europe and Canada in the same year, his family has been farming and producing high quality vanilla beans for sale via local distributors and exporters since 1910.
Dylan's grandfather, Toto, was the first in the family working on vanilla plantations supplying French traders. Dylan's father, Venja, continued supplying the French traders. Shortly after Madagascar's independence in 1960, the trade became dominated by Chinese immigrants who had previously worked on French owned plantations. The Chinese became buyers and exporters of vanilla and were Venja's new customers. Venja's wife, Bavy, took care of hand pollinating the vanilla orchids at their family owned plantation 15km north west of Andapa. Today, Madagascar Spices farms, processes and exports vanilla directly to its customers.
From a young age of 15, Dylan literary followed his parents footsteps to the vanilla plantation on a daily basis. He is one of 10 children and the only son in the family to have continued his passion for vanilla in his professional life.
The three hectares plantation located close to Andapa has about 1,000 plants which produces maximum five tons of mainly Bourbon and Thahiti vanilla p/year. Additionally, some Pompona as well as some Mangitsy Ampotony is grown (which is not intended as a premium export product as it has a lower vanillin content).
In 2015, Dylan started farmers cooperative named Madagascar Natural Products, or MNP for short. The cooperarive provides agricultural training, equipment to its members when needed, such as flashlights and raincoats. Through education and support, MNP's objective is to help its vanilla growers meet the highest possible quality requirements. As of 2016, there are four member families with eight individual farmers each. In total there are 32 farmers located in areas stretching from and around Andapa to Sambava.
During the vanilla processing season from June until August Madagascar Spices has 25 staff members in Andapa and 10 in Sambava. The 20th June is the official start of harversting. The processing, or so-called curing process of each vanilla pod, takes approximately one month. This inludes the cooking (to retain the aroma), drying, sorting and packaging. The vanilla is then ready for export. Madagascar Spices takes great pride in their end-products that is achived through the highly laborous process from hand-pollination to packaging. Additionally, their products are 100% organic with no use of artificial fertilisers. The company accepts small and large orders with the smallest being 2kg sent by DHL or FedEx.
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