Supply chain News and trends

Supply chains in commodity industries are often characterized by social and environmental abuse. In the cocoa industry, for example, the average farmer cultivates between three and five hectares to earn less than two dollars a day. It is an environment rife with social and environmental abuse. In this article, the authors look at the experience of Tony’s Chocolonely, a Dutch chocolate brand founded in 2005, which set itself a mission to sell 100% slavery-free chocolate. They show how Tony’s brought its supply chain partners together to create an altogether new paradigm in which all actors take responsibility for social impact. And it really works: Tony’s profitably sells around $130 million worth of slavery-free chocolate bars in Western Europe and the U.S.

Via EcoVadis

The European Cocoa Association (ECA) and the Association of Chocolate, Biscuit and Confectionery Industries of Europe (CAOBISCO) are on track to deliver access to cocoa marketing agencies’ farming data that the Associations’ Members have collected over the years.

According to the organizations, this data collection effort should feed into a combined database owned and driven by producing countries, in compliance with EU and national data privacy legislation, to achieve a robust nationwide traceability system.

Speaking to FoodIngedientsFirst, Christiaan Prins, chairman of the European Cocoa Association Sustainability Working Group, says farm data collection is crucial to building a sustainable cocoa supply chain. 

“Understanding where cocoa is farmed is a precondition to prevent cocoa from being sourced from protected or deforested areas. In addition, farm data allows companies to support cocoa farmers with tailor-made development plans for their farms. Combining the data from different companies with cocoa origin government-owned data will greatly add to the transparency of the cocoa supply chain.”

Via EcoVadis

With 420 million hectares of forest cover lost in the past 30 years, the debate on deforestation and traceability in the cocoa supply chain took up the last day of the ECA Cocoa Forum 2022, held in Rome.
While the forthcoming European Union regulation is designed to protect citizens with a guarantee that the products they buy are not contributing to destroying forests around the world, the cocoa sector is well aware that it has to become more transparent in the whole of its supply change, with strict traceability linking a plot of land from where the cocoa beans originate from.

New due diligence rules imposed by the EU will be applicable to all operators, and delegates heard discussions are ongoing with individual countries including Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, the two biggest cocoa producers, to create a benchmark system within the legal framework of their governments.

Via EcoVadis