Anatrans is a cashew processing factory that is situated in Bobo-Dioulasso, city in the South East of Burkina Faso, and the second largest city in the country, after Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso's capital. Anatrans was established in 2009 and has an employee capacity of 1171.
After discovering how to turn cashew shells into renewable energy the enterprise has never looked back.
Through the project; “Recovery of waste from the cashew sector as a renewable energy source for SMEs in Burkina Faso”, initiated to explore and encourage the use of alternative sources of energy such as fuel briquettes and work with the government to introduce incentive mechanisms in order to promote sustainable production systems, Anatrans has benefitted immensely.
Fondation 2IE was the grantee for this project.
The recovery of waste of the cashew industry, currently about 2000 tonnes each year, with a potential of 15,000 tons each year, is a sustainable alternative to the use of wood for domestic and industrial needs. Studies have found timber can be better substituted by cashew nut briquettes.
“Our collaboration with SWITCH Africa Green Programme was regarding the valorization of the waste that is produced during the cashew processing,” says Ysbrand Huisman, Technical Assistant, Anatrans. We started off by looking at what we could do with the shell itself, if we could carbonize it and then create briquettes out of the shell.”
The project also intended to find a sustainable way of developing cashew by-product development and waste disposal. As the capacity of local processors grows, the amount of cashew waste, specifically cashew shells increase. With a high caloric value, local uses need to be found to expand a sustainable production system.
Deforestation has been a longstanding issue for countries that are part of the Sahel. The daily use of wood and charcoal for MSMEs and households drastically adds to this problem. By finding a sustainable alternative, the use of wood biomass as an energy source and the emission of greenhouse gases can be reduced.
Environmentally, waste disposal was greatly reduced through the processing of the cashew shells into useable products, avoiding dumping in landfills. The use of cashew nut shells as biofuel to diesel or distillate diesel oil (DDO) also reduced greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The production of carbonized cashew shell briquettes as a replacement for traditionally used wood and charcoal reduced the need to chop trees and will consequently add to the fight against deforestation in the region.
An analysis on carbonized cashew shell briquettes and Cashew nut shell liquid was done. The report showed that in both cases there is interest in replacing the current raw material with the sustainable alternative. This has created interest from several associations and MSMEs to look into these business opportunities.
Staff and MSMEs in and around Bobo-Dioulasso learnt carbonization of cashew shells and the positive implication of the use of cashew shell briquettes versus untreated cashew shells. This has helped shape the local population thoughts around cashew shells and helped shape their ambitions to become carbon neutral. There has been an offtake of 10-20% of the enterprises’ shells by local people who can collect them for free.
While it has been challenging to convince people of the advantages of sustainable alternative products due to longstanding habits, Anatrans has strove to lay a strong foundation. The machine needed to create briquettes with the desired density is costly, and this makes creating a sustainable business model more challenging.
“These briquettes showed to work quite well,” Huisman adds. “The challenge was that it might not be dense enough, so you need a lot to replace it a small volume of charcoal or wood. Before the SWITCH Africa Green project, we did not do anything with this by-product, the shells, the waste. We paid the municipality to deposit it somewhere safely. With the huge value we could find in the cashew shell, we can create a factory that is 100% green.”
The project studies executed throughout its duration have shown the enormous potential of the cashew shell as a sustainable source of fuel. Considering the high volume of cashew production in the region, this suggests promising developments in a sustainable value chain. A lot of knowledge was acquired during the execution of this project. By looking at different forms of extraction with the different forms of cashew remnants, Anatrans able to see what the most feasible extraction method is.
