World’s biggest chocolate maker making strides in cocoa production that are good for farmers, forests

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – The world’s top producer of cocoa, the key ingredient of chocolate, is on a mission to feed the appetite of chocolate lovers in Singapore and the world without exploiting forests and farmers.

Switzerland-based Barry Callebaut, which is also the biggest chocolate maker in the world, is estimated to produce about a fifth of the company’s cocoa beans. In recent times, it has been focusing on infusing sustainability into its cocoa supply chain in the Ivory Coast, in the West African coast.

The Straits Times in April went to the plantations in the Ivory Coast capital Abidjan that provide the cocoa that gets transformed into the finest Barry Callebaut chocolate products.

The Swiss cocoa giant operates out of over 45 countries, employs a global workforce of more than 13,000 people and generates sales of about 8.1 billion Swiss francs (S$12.1 billion) annually.

The appetite for chocolate in Asia has grown over the past decade, with cocoa businesses grinding 904,094 tonnes of cocoa in 2022, up from 606,622 tonnes in 2012, according to the Cocoa Association of Asia.

But non-profit groups have raised concerns over the cost to poor communities in the global South, including Ghana and the Ivory Coast, that farm the popular ingredient and their forests, and which are cleared for cocoa monoculture.

The Ivory Coast has lost about 85 per cent of its forests since 1960, mainly due to cocoa farming, leaving it with only 2.97 million ha of forest, or 8.9 per cent of the country’s land.

In May, Barry Callebaut refined and postponed some of its targets to make chocolate sustainable by 2025, because it felt more time was needed – until 2030 – for systemic change to take place.

Mr Nicolas Mounard, Barry Callebaut vice-president for sustainability and farming, told media on April 27 that the company needs five more years to ensure that all its ingredients come from sustainable sources – those that do not contribute to deforestation and whose products can be traced to the farm where they are produced.

Sustainable ingredients are expected to make up 75 per cent of production by 2025, said Mr Mounard. He added that the company is working with the European Union to meet its sweeping anti-deforestation law approved in April.

Under the law, listed goods, including cocoa, cannot be sold if they come from deforested land or have contributed to forest degradation after Dec 31, 2020.

This aligns with Barry Callebaut’s efforts to map its entire supply chain and ensure that cocoa can be traced to plantations that do not encroach on virgin forests.

The Straits Times was given a demonstration of how a farm’s boundaries in Tiassale, about 140km from Abidjan, can be monitored using satellite data on an app. The app will alert the firm whenever a change in the farm’s boundaries results in a decrease in forest cover.