This year, the two most important changes are the hiring of a new director and a new quality manager.
Jairo Vigil, the new director, is a cacao taster and has a very broad vision of cacao, from the agricultural practices to the finished product. He has driven many changes in the organization by bringing in Hector Garcia as quality manager. Hector is one of the most recognized and passionate cacao tasters in El Salvador. They are both members of the "Mesa nacional de catadores de cacao", a group of tasters trained at the National University of Peru, to improve the quality of Salvadoran cacao through their evaluations and recommendations, initiative promoted by the NGO Alianza cacao.
Another of the great changes this year was the construction of a quality control laboratory fully equipped for cacao analysis, but also with all the professional equipment necessary for the manufacture of cacao liquor and chocolate. Hector runs the laboratory and the improvement in quality is already evident.
