The presentations held during the Chocoa conference are available!

The chocoa conference
Last Friday, we gathered at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) for the first Chocoa conference.

The day was a great success with interesting speakers, good discussions and sharp questions! Here, you can find the presentations of the speakers. Chocoa wanted to contribute to the promotion of sustainable cocoa. This first Cocoa conference focused on ‘fine or flavour’ and ‘single origin’ cocoa as instruments to boost the volume of sustainable cocoa and was meant as a start of an on-going discussion on topics related to sustainable cocoa. The conference singled out three issues: what is sustainability and fine or flavour cocoa and single origin, the potential of this niche market in West-Africa and the conquest of the consumer market.

The day was opened by Jack Steijn, secretary of the Chocoa Board, who stated that the objective of Chocoa was to promote sustainable cocoa, to inform consumers on fine or flavour and single origin cocoa and to discuss any obstacles. Marcel Vernooij from the Ministry of Economic Affairs was welcomed on stage and underlined the importance of subject of the conference. To promote the new CocoaCONNECT website, Anna Laven from KIT joined Marcel Vernooij on stage and talked about the goals, use and promotion of cocoaCONNECT. After these talks, Bianca Tan, chair of the day, took over and introduced the first speaker.

The first 4 speakers concentrated on the question: are fine flavour and single origin cocoa sustainable? Most of the ‘fine or flavour’ and ‘single origin’ based chocolate that is on sale today is not certified according to the main existing certification schemes. Does that mean that this chocolate is not sustainable? The definition of fine flavour cocoa was given by Ed Seguine from Mars and also in the second presentation by Martin Christy from Direct Cacao. Kiri Kalenko and Joe Fisher presented their experience from a small bean to bar producer of Hotel Chocolate. Britta Wyss Bisang talked about Utz Certified and its traceability strategy. Lars Brogaard from DS continued on the subject of standardization by talking about the new European and ISO standard for sustainable cocoa.

The second part of the day focused on the origin of fine flavour cocoa. Fine or flavour and single origin cocoa mainly comes from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Indian Ocean. However, West Africa is the main source of cocoa. Are there possibilities to develop fine or flavour and single origin cocoa in Africa? Two speakers talked about this subject: Pierre Etoa told about the situation in Cameroon with regard to fine or flavour cocoa, and Bo van Elzakker from the Louis Bolk institute talked about the progress in fine or flavour cocoa production in Ghana.

The last 4 speakers focused on the consumers preference for fine flavour cocoa. The market of fine flavour cocoa is just at the beginning of its development, lagging behind for instance the coffee market. Would it be possible to develop a consumer preference for ‘fine or flavour’ or ‘single origin’ cocoa and what can be learned from other markets like coffee, cheese and wine? Michaël de Groot from Rabobank Rural Funds presented the market perspectives for the niche market. Philippe Bastide from CIRAD talked about the marketing of agricultural commodities and stated that it is possible for fine or flavour cocoa to develop, as long as producers can differentiate themselves and consumers are ready to give a significant added value to both signs. Laurent Pipitone from ICCO continued about the market competitiveness of fine or flavour cocoa and how to improve its situation. Stephan Weise from Bioversity was the last speaker of the day, and talked about Cocoa of Excellence project, to draw attention to the high quality cocoa recognize origin of cocoa in the world.

The day was a great success: the discussions after each block were intense and gave answers to the most prominent questions that arose from the presentations. The audience was involved and a lot of connections were made. The speakers were motivated and dedicated to defend their point of view on the subject of fine or flavour and single origin cocoa. Here, you will find the presentations of the speakers. A communique will also be written as a follow up for this day, and will be spread and put on this website as soon as possible.