Cashew nuts are the seeds of a tropical tree, family of the pistachio tree. The nuts grow in a hard shell hanging from a fruit, the cashew apple. One apple produces just one nut. This nut will be ripe a fortnight before the apple ripens and will fall from the apple. The nuts are picked up and dried. The apples from which the nuts grow are also eaten.
Cashew nuts are dried both artificially and naturally in the sun. When the nuts have been dried, they are taken to factories by buyers for further processing.

The cashew nuts are roasted in their shells to make the hull crackable. There are cracking machines, but it is still often done manually. During cracking the released oil is collected. The nut is heated in order to take off the brown skin. Then they are sorted for size and colour. As the nuts have to be heated for cracking, but the shells are not equally thick, there will be colour differences in the nuts. This difference is divided into three grades. Then they are sorted by size. This is done by number of pieces per pound (453 grams). A frequent standard size in The Netherlands is Wholes 320. Apart from whole nuts, broken and chopped cashew nuts are also available. They also have different gradations: for size of pieces and for colour.

Products:
• Whole cashew nuts
• Broken cashew nuts
• Chopped cashew nuts

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