Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash have today released a discussion paper outlining options to protect consumers and businesses from unfair commercial practices at Wellington Chocolate Factory. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Wellington Chocolate Factory (WCF), which pioneered ethical bean-to-bar chocolate, has announced it's sourcing more of its cacao supply from the Pacific.
It is also to doubling down on its commitment to transparency, impact, and producing some of New Zealand's best chocolate.
It already has a Grower Partner initiative established, sourcing premium beans for its first single-origin Vanuatu bar directly from farmers.
WCF's co-founder Gabe Davidson said the success of this programme and the improving infrastructure across the Pacific mean they can now source the quantities of cocoa for its next growth stage.
Davidson spoke with RNZ Pacific.
(The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash have today released a discussion paper outlining options to protect consumers and businesses from unfair commercial practices at Wellington Chocolate Factory. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Don Wiseman: Wellington Chocolate Factory, you're moving to the next stage in terms of your already close relationship with the Pacific. What are you doing?
Gabe Davidson: From the beginning, it's nearly 11 years now, we've had a strong interest in cocoa from the Pacific. So this is more of a firming up of a long term strategy to source most of our cocoa beans from the Pacific. It's an exciting time, and we've seen a lot of changes along the way.
DW: You had a spectacular trip by yacht from Bougainville early on. Where are you getting most of your chocolate now?
GD: Well, in the Pacific, most of our beans are currently coming from Vanuatu. We've also sourced from the Solomon Islands, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Fiji. Up until recently we've sourced most of our cacao from Peru and the Dominican Republic. So yeah, this, it's been a long process, and we're really excited to be focusing more on on our neighbours in the Pacific.
DW: So you won't get anything from South America, be exclusively Pacific cocoa.
GD: It's still a transition, but we're now majority from the Pacific and from, you know, our neighbours and and so we're less reliant on Peru and Dominican Republic. Our goal is to be exclusively the Pacific, with an exception or two. You don't want to be too hard about it. If there's an interesting origin somewhere that we come across then, we'll explore that. But our focus is, definitely for this upcoming year keep going in that direction.
DW: You've long time had a focus on organics, but in the Pacific, while the product almost invariably is organic, it's not certified organic, because that's a legal process producers have to go through, and I don't think many of them are big enough to justify that sort of bureaucratic involvement. How do you get around that?
GD: Yeah, you're absolutely right, Don. There is interest from growers to transition to certified organic, but it's not practical at this point in time. The good thing about being so close is we can visit our suppliers regularly, and they certainly don't use the sort of pesticides and they grow organically. As you said, they don't have the certification. At this point in time, we will continue to use organic ingredients where possible, for example, our sugar is fair trade and organic. And like fair trade, the industry is in the early stages of growth and is working towards transitioning to organic certifications and the like.
DW: Now, as a result of horrendous weather, I think, in Africa last year, crazy things happened to the price of cacao. Is that still a factor? Or have those prices come back?
GD: It is still a factor. There are a number of factors affecting the global cocoa price. We pay roughly 80% more than the farm gate price in West Africa, where most of the world's cocoa has grown. As part of our new transparency commitment, we're publishing our farm gate price annually. What we'll be paying changes, but roughly $5,500 per tonned, which is about 80 - 81% higher than the farm gate price. The cocoa shortage has put the price of cocoa up overall. But at this point in time, we're not seeing we have to increase our prices to be able to do what we're doing.
DW: So the price of the end product?
GD: Yes, our chocolate bar price at this point in time remains the same, but we plan to produce also some ultra premium Pacific bars in the future, so they'll be at a higher price point as well. But our decision to change our sourcing won't impact the current prices. But like all businesses, we may need to consider general price increases, if required.
DW: I know that the surge in returns for farmers in parts of the Pacific has had a huge impact. And in some environments, particularly in Bougainville, there's been a lot of work going into trying to improve the farms themselves, and those farms lay idle for generations in Bougainville and similar things right across the Pacific, I think, in terms of the interest and enthusiasm that there was for cocoa.
GD: It's interesting you should mention Bougainville, because that's where it really started to get interesting for us. We had a friend come in every day to drink hot chocolate, and she was working for the VSA over there. And there was a cocoa farmer who had planted his first tree, I think, in 1950, and he was about to give up his farm because the commodity price was so low, it wasn't really worth it.
So we went over there. The quality of cacao was absolutely delicious, and he hadn't heard of the craft chocolate revolution. James Rutana really wanted to have a direct trade between Bougainville and New Zealand. And he said, well, why don't you learn to sail, borrow a sailing boat and pick up a tonne of cocoa. No one can stop you.
We could then put Bougainville on the sacks of cocoa and release the first ever single origin Bougainville boat. He was only half joking, and that that turned into - what was supposed to be a six week voyage turned into a three month voyage on a traditional vaka from Fiji, using star navigation. So in that voyage, we were so honoured to have the opportunity to sail from Fiji to Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, up to Bougainville and back down, ultimately, to Taranaki and Wellington.
We got to to meet a lot of the growers along the way. And as you say, there's been a lot of work put into creating that second segment, you've got your commodity market, and then the specialty cacao, which is what we focus on, where we can offer a higher price to the farmers. So there's an annual chocolate festival.
The first one started in Solomon Islands, where we've been asked to judge a few times, and it's a really exciting time for growers, and it'll help create a more sustainable industry and and encourage young people to stay working in the family business.
