What are the quality standards of cocoa beans in Netherlands?

When importing cocoa beans, general European standards on food safety need to be met in order to be granted access to the market. To meet the high-quality standard of the Dutch market, exporters to the Netherlands will have to meet high expectations. Currently, traders mostly use a combination of evaluation methods, the cocoa bean industry quality requirements guide provides good insight into the quality evaluation methods which traders commonly use.

Although there is no current harmonized evaluation method, a workgroup is working to create an international standardized classification scheme, which can be found at Cocoa for excellence.