ZURICH: As groups of sweets scramble to reduce excess sugar, chocolate sweetened with cocoa fruit crunch is set to hit supermarket shelves with food giant Nestle ready to unleash its “Incoa” bar. launched.
By using crushed cocoa fruit, which is usually discarded, to flavor products that reduce sugar and cut food waste while boosting cocoa farmers ’incomes which will be able to “refresh” the cocoa by selling both the pulp and the beans.
That kicks in a number of boxes with health and environmental conscious consumers.
“This is a major launch, we will deliver it to all customers who want it and do not restrict supply,” Alexander von Maillot, head of global sweeteners at Nestle, told Reuters this week.
The company is launching Incoa, which has no added sugar, in supermarkets in France and the Netherlands with other European markets to follow.
Nestle is sourcing the raw material from cocoa farms in Brazil, but is also working with partners in West Africa to see if pulp production could work there. Von Maillot said cocoa farmers could increase their income by 20-40 percent if they also sold the pulpit.
Lamine Keita, a cocoa farmer in Duekoue, Ivory Coast, said he has not yet been asked to sell crushed cocoa fruit. “If we can sell more than the beans to increase our income, that is what we can ask for because beans alone are not enough to lift us out of poverty,” he said.
Jerome Koffi, who cultivates cocoa on four hectares of land in Soubre, said he would be happy to sell more, but at the moment there was only a demand for beans.
Cheap fruit crushing doesn’t come – Incoa bars on Dutch wholesale website Albert Heijn cost about 50 percent more than other dark chocolates. But Von Maillot said that while the cost did not mean that crushing was not suitable for replacing mainstream products with sugar, there may be other uses for cocoa fruit chocolate, for example in baking.
AFTERNOON PRAYER
Lindt & Spruengli and Ritter Sport in Germany have also quickly launched limited editions of cocoa fruit chocolate. Both said they planned to launch the products at a larger scale when enough cocoa fruit was available.
Swiss chocolate preparation Felchlin’s cocoa fruit preparation was discovered into macarons and truffles that Spruengli gave a high chocolate – not related to Lindt – known as a “world novel”.
Lindt and Felchlin receive cocoa fruit crushing from Swiss-Ghanaian starter Koa https://koa-impact.com, which uses solar-powered mobile units to process fresh crushed from 1,600 small farmers. Koa is capable of processing 250 tonnes per year but wants to increase its capacity 10 times within the next two years.
Meanwhile, Barry Callebaut’s core business is getting ready to present its WholeFruit Chocolate to chefs and artisans. It has also set up a special brand, Cabosse Naturals, to sell cocoa fruit ingredients to customers like Mondelez International for use in fruit snacks.
The Recycled Food Association said worldwide cocoa fruit trade could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 20 million tonnes per year. He describes “recycling” as using food products that have not been eaten by humans, with proven supply chains and a positive environmental impact.
Brigette Wolf, head of SnackFutures at Mondelez, said recycling was appealing to those who want to “make an impact” with their food choices.
The company expects three varieties of CaPao Cacaofruit Fruit Bites to be sold this year, in more than 2,000 stores by late 2021 or early 2022.
AFRICAN RESULTS
Product expert Tedd George said extracting added value from the crop could boost the West African cocoa region as the current incentives focused only on growing and selling more beans.
“There is a chance that new products made from cocoa fruit will also be health products and that changes the game for the value you get from them,” he said, citing the health benefits associated with dark chocolate.
Nestle has repositioned itself as a health and wellness company, reducing sugar in its products, and has also set sustainability targets including cocoa.
George said the launch of cocoa fruit products did not address fundamental issues such as child labor or deforestation, but could encourage investment and encourage change in cocoa-producing communities.
He said companies should also develop cocoa products for African flavors. “If there was also local demand for cocoa, that would boost farmers’ price power.”
(Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz, additional report by Maytaal Angel in London and Ange Aboa in Abidjan; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)