Cargill broke ground today on a $100 million, state-of-the-art cocoa-processing facility in Gresik, Indonesia. The new facility will help the Minneapolis-based company meet growing customer demand for cocoa products and encourage development of the Asian cocoa sector.

The facility will be Cargill’s first cocoa-processing plant in Asia and demonstrates the company’s commitment to develop and grow the Asian cocoa industry. The investment will also strengthen Cargill’s Indonesian cocoa sourcing network and cocoa sustainability activities.

Cargill will create approximately 200 new jobs in Indonesia, as well as additional positions in its existing research and development application centers in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and in the company’s commercial network.

Expected to be operational by mid-2014, the facility will process approximately 70,000 metric tonnes of cocoa beans into a broad range of products for customers in the Asian market.