Rise
of the purists: is chocolate the new coffee?
Growing interest in the origins of chocolate is helping cocoa
producers in Ivory Coast and Madagascar gain a bigger slice of the
sector’s mega profits
The inside of a cacao seed,
from Madagascar, which is used to produce chocolate. Photograph: Chocolat
Madagascar
Sunday 4 September
2016 03.00 EDTLast modified on Sunday 4 September 201606.30 EDT
Chocolate is far from a generic product.
Madagascan cocoa is fruity, with a slight acidity; cocoa from São Tomé is woody
and spicy, while cocoa from Papua New Guinea has musky, leathery undertones.
This uniqueness – and growing interest in it as a selling point
to consumers – provides an opportunity for producing countries to gain a bigger
proportion of the billion-dollar chocolate industry by expanding the market for
single-origin chocolate.
Because of their unique taste profiles, and often small
production, single-origin beans command a premium. While beans traded on the
commodities exchange currently sell at about $3/kg, François Pralus, a French chocolatier, says that the beans he
buys cost from $4.50/kg in Ghana to $11/kg in Venezuela. He also buys them
directly from the producer (as is often the case for single-origin chocolate,
for issues of traceability), cutting out the middle man.
Although this price premium is positive for cocoa growers, the
beans remain a raw material export. The chocolate is then manufactured in
Europe or North America, with ingredients (cocoa butter, milk, sugar) sourced
elsewhere. Most of the costs are added outside the country of origin;
typically, raw ingredients only make up about
3% of a bar’s price.
Some chocolate producers are therefore pushing the concept of
single origin further. And it is this that offers the potential for even more
of the value of the lucrative chocolate trade to be kept in countries such as
Ivory Coast and Madagascar.
What is single-origin
chocolate?
The new idea of single-origin chocolate means that all the
ingredients in the couverture (the wholesale/bulk cocoa used by chefs,
chocolatiers etc) must come from the same country and be processed locally.
Chocolaterie Robert for instance, a
chocolate producer based in Madagascar, exports single-origin chocolate
products (notably couverture) under the brand name Chocolat Madagascar. They
are made from its single-origin beans and manufactured locally. It also sells
retail chocolate bars and fine chocolates on the domestic market.
All
the ingredients of the Chocolat Madagascar brand are sourced and manufactured
locally for domestic markets and export. Photograph: Chocolat Madagascar
“When chocolate is made in the country of origin, it adds
value,” says Neil Kelsall, sales and marketing director at Chocolaterie Robert.
“More people are employed in the process, the activity generates revenue and
raises taxes locally, it has many more benefits for the origin country.”
HB Ingredients, the UK’s largest independent chocolate
distributor, started distributing Chocolat Madagascar couverture in 2013. The
Madagascan products complement their single-origin couverture range, which also
includes chocolate from Colombia and Grenada.
Steve Calver, account manager at HB Ingredients, says that
single-origin couverture remains a niche market because of its price and
limited production (Chocolaterie Robert for instance produces 280 tonnes of
cocoa and Claudio Corallo in São Tomé and Príncipe just 20 tonnes).
But it is growing, he says, partly because of its quality, and
partly because ofgreater consumer awareness of what
single-origin chocolate means.
Unfortunately, current labelling rules don’t allow consumers to
easily distinguish between single-origin chocolate made in the origin country
and single-origin chocolate harvested in one country but made elsewhere, so
it’s left to manufacturers, distributors and retailers to explain. Chocolat
Madagascar uses the Raise Trade label, a movement seeking to
positively identify products manufactured in the country of origin.
How can cacao producers
benefit?
Over the past three years, Chocolat Madagascar has won a raft of
international awards and spurred Chocolaterie Robert to invest in a new
plantation. Last year, it bought 1,700 hectares of degraded cocoa plantations
from the government. When fully rehabilitated (which will take between five and
10 years), the new plantation should have a production capacity of 600 tonnes,
more than double what it was previously, with the prospect of adding to its
staff of 70 people.
Chocolat
Madagascar is planning to increase production and employment at its facilities
in the country. Photograph: Chocolat Madagascar
A number of small chocolate factories have popped up in Peru,
Ecuador, Brazil and Vietnam over the past few years, but they remain few and
far between, especially in Africa.
Calver says that the barriers to entry are high. “Setting up a chocolate
factory requires a lot of investment and production knowledge.”
Manufacturing accounts for a great deal of the finished
product’s taste so the risk, says Pralus, is to ruin a very good bean with
mediocre processing. Starting from scratch is an onerous task, even for
experienced hands. Pralus, who has a small cocoa plantation on the island of
Nosy Be in north-west Madagascar, says that he gave up on plans to build a
chocolate factory there because of the difficult business climate – the country
is ranked 164 out of 189 countries for ease of doing business according to the World Bank.
Breaking into new markets is another challenge. In the
mid-2000s, Chocolaterie Robert tried but failed to market its retail products
in Europe and the US. “That’s how we decided to go for wholesale; it means our
investment is about cocoa, not about branding or marketing,” says Kelsall.
Claudio Corallo, the only cocoa grower to also manufacture in
São Tomé and Príncipe, says that it is a question of hard work and ultimately,
philosophy. “My chocolate is from soil to bar, not bean to bar. It’s something
you must nurture from the plant,” he says. On the sustainable dimension of
processing chocolate in the country of origin, he says: “People who do the
pruning, who deliver, who peel the cocoa beans, they must feel they are part of
the machine. Then it becomes sustainable.”
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