Pepper in Cambodia has a centuries’ long history which precedes the great civilization of the kings of Angkor. The Chinese explorer Tchéou Ta Kouan describes pepper production in Cambodia as early as the 13th century.

In 1873-1874, war erupted in the Aceh province of Indonesia. Unable to contain the powerful Dutch army, the sultan of Aceh - not wanting to leave this wealth in the hands of his enemies - burned down his pepper plantation. Part of the production then moved to Cambodia, in the Kampot region.

Kampot province witnessed a real “pepper fever” with the arrival of the French colonists at the end of the 19th century. They intensified the production and produced up to 8000 tonnes a year at the beginning of the next century.

In the middle of the 20th century, Kampot Pepper is at its pinnacle. Production which stabilized around 3000 tonnes per year is of exceptional quality. Kampot Pepper is then the spice of choice for the top French restaurants.

In 1975, the Khmer rouge took over the country and put in place a regime of terror that ruled the country for the next 5 years. Land and people were monopolized in order to grow rice almost exclusively.

During this period, 2 million Cambodians disappeared, infrastructure was destroyed, and intellectual elites systematically eliminated. Since the 1998 elections, the country enjoys again a relative calm but everything needs to be rebuilt...

These 5 years of terror and the 30 years of civil war that followed put a stop to the pepper production in Kampot. Pepper farms almost completely vanished and only a few poles remained out of the million still in place in the 60’s.

At the end of the 20th century, producers’ families came back on their ancestral land. Coming from several generations of pepper producers, they naturally cleared the land left abandoned and started cultivating their favourite spice once again.

A new era starts... In 2006, thanks to the support of private business and development organizations, production picks up and recovers its former glory.