Cocoa innovation is all around, from cocoa-free chocolate through to cell cultivation. That’s unsurprising given the state of the cocoa sector, which has been plagued by extreme volatility over the last 18 months.
But Nestlé isn’t concentrating efforts on alternatives. Instead, it’s working to get more yield from cocoa fruit with a new, patented technique.
Using more cocoa fruit in chocolate production
The new process can use up to 30% more cocoa fruit in the production of chocolate. That’s almost a third of the cocoa fruit (including the pulp, placenta and pod husk) that might otherwise be discarded.
In traditional chocolate production, it’s just the cocoa beans that are harvested from the cocoa pod. They’re then fermented, dried, roasted, and ground into a liquor which is used to make confectionery. Nestlé’s approach is now to valorise all parts of the fruit inside the cocoa pod.
It’s a simplified process. As the company puts it, “everything inside the pod is collected as a wet mass”. That mass ferments naturally and, importantly, unlocks the “key chocolate flavour”. The reason the process works so well, suggests Nestlé, is that it allows for chocolate to maintain its “great taste”.
Once the mass is ground, roasted and dried, it ends up as chocolate flakes, ready for confectionery production.
“This groundbreaking technique utilises more of the fruit, while enabling us to provide delicious chocolate to our consumers,” explains Louise Barrett, head of the Nestlé Research and Development Center for Confectionery in York, UK.
While still in its pilot stage, the KitKat and Aero maker is exploring how it can scale-up the innovation. At Nestlé’s York site alone, the company uses up to 12,000 tonnes of cocoa mass to produce chocolate for its brands.
Maximising cocoa harvests amid chocolate chaos
The development comes amid what can only be described as a true cocoa crisis.
Over the past year and a half, crops have been plagued by disease (swollen shoot virus), exacerbated by poor weather. Global warming also poses a major threat to cocoa supply, creating a perfect storm – leading to supply shortages and record price hikes.
Also read → Cocoa crisis: The main causes
At the same time, chocolate makers have been reformulating to reduce cocoa content in their products. As reported by The Grocer last month, Nestlé is among the companies to have removed the term chocolate from its offerings – in this case, a white chocolate KitKat – in the UK, having cut cocoa butter levels below the legal 20% minimum.
It’s against this backdrop that Nestlé has been working to make chocolate production more efficient, so more material can be sourced from fewer fruits.
“With climate change increasingly affecting cocoa yields around the world, we are exploring innovative solutions that could help cocoa farmers maximise the potential of their harvests,” says Barrett.
Indeed, Nestlé expects its new technique to bulk up the amount of cocoa material available to farmers, meaning they could have more time to focus on other climate-friendly practices, such as pruning, that help improve yields.
