You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.

The diagram below shows the stages of processing cocoa beans. Write a report for a university lecturer describing the process below.

Write at least 150 words.

The given flow chart illustrates how cocoa beans are processed to obtain different products. It can be clearly seen that there are three stages in the process, from the initial whole beans to the final products in the market.

In the first stage, the whole beans are picked from the cocoa tree. After being picked, their outer shells are removed and they are dried for the next stage. Stage 2 consists of many steps. Firstly, the dried beans are pressed. Some of these pressed beans are further pressed to make cocoa cake, whereas the rest are refined to make industrial chocolate to which sugar is added.

In the third and final stage, the cocoa cake is ground to make cocoa powder and liquor is also obtained. The cocoa powder is sent to the market to be used by the consumer, whereas the cocoa liquor is used in the industry to make cakes and drinks. The industrial chocolate is sent for final processing after which the finished chocolate products are finally consumed by consumers.

Overall, there are three stages in the process of making different products from cocoa beans.