Welcome to Madagascar Spices, Sambava
Madagascar Spices is a farmer, processor and exporter of spices from the SAVA region in northeast Madagascar. Headquartered in Sambava, in the centre of Madagascar's vanilla farmlands and processing areas, our company is specialised in the cultivation and preparation of high quality and organically grown vanilla for export.Our company was founded in 2015 by its CEO, Dylan Randriamihaja, who is the third generation of Malagasy vanilla farmers from Andapa.
The family's three hectares plantation located 20km southwest of Andapa has about 6,000 plants which produce mainly Bourbon while our plantation 19km south of Sambava has approximately the same number of plants but a mix of Bourbon and Tahitian vanilla. In all, these plantations produce about 3,600kg of green beans which become about 720kg of black vanilla beans. Demand for more is supplied by FTTV, our cooperative of many individual small-scale farmers mainly in the Andapa region.
During the vanilla processing season from June until September, Madagascar Spices employs 10 staff in Andapa and 40 in Sambava. The processing, or so-called curing process of each vanilla pod, takes approximately three months. After harvesting, the beans are scalded for three minutes at 60-70°C to retain their aroma for longer. Next the beans are sun dried for about two months and thereafter stored on racks to stabilise before being sorted, graded and packaged for export.
We take great pride in our vanilla end-products that are achieved through a highly laborious process from hand-pollination to packaging. All our products are naturally organic without the use of artificial fertilisers.
In 2018 and 2019, independent biological analysis of our vanilla was performed by ECOCERT. In addition to being naturally organic, our vanilla products are therefore also certified organic. The certification span crops, handling and processing of our green and cured vanilla beans.
Besides vanilla, Madagascar Spices also offers various natural products from our region, such as cacao, coffee and pepper.