Imperial Coco

COCONUT SUGAR

Coconut sugar is made from a tree called Cocos nucifera, which naturally grows in tropical countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines. Our country, Indonesia, is the biggest coconut producer in the world. Coconut sugar is often called by different names in some countries such as brown sugar, arenga sugar, and palm sugar, where there is confusion whether it is the same thing. Well, it is not. Most brown sugar is a mixture of white sugar and molasses, which is a type of sugar-derived syrup. Molasses is responsible for its darker color and slightly increases its nutritional value. Arenga and palm sugar are the same thing, which we will explain in another section below.

The process of making coconut sugar begins with neera (nira in Bahasa), the nectar sap of coconut tree’s flower-bud stem that is harvested two times a day by our farmers. A cut is made on the flower-bud stem and the liquid sap is collected. What may surprise you is that, they use a very long bamboo pole that has been perforated with small holes that enough only for their big toe, not the whole foot, to climb up the tree. They do this while carrying two large pongkor, a handmade container from big bamboo to collect the neera, and a special sapper. Imagine their strength and skill.

Once harvested, the neera is transferred into a huge wok and boiled until it is thicken and change color from translucent to dark brown. This process to lower the moisture content continues for several hours until it becomes solid, then it is granulated and sifted by hand. After that, the goods are packed into sacks and sent away to our processing facililty to further meet our specification.