Zurich company to help increase Unilever’s sustainability efforts
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Barry Callebaut and Unilever Monday 23 January signed a long-term partnership agreement that will double the cocoa and chocolate the Swiss-based company delivers to the Dutch-based consumer goods and foods producer. Barry Callebaut will invest CHF22 million under the terms of the agreement to ramp up to “provide 70 percent of Unilever’s global cocoa and chocolate products”.
Unilver is looking to ice cream products in particular to double sales while reducing environmental impact. The Zurich chocolate company has already helped build sales significantly with the Magnum ice cream line. Unilever has come under pressure, along with other multinationals, for its use of chocolate that is not certified Fair Trade. The company notes on its web site that “cocoa accounts for 4 percent of our total volume of agricultural raw materials. We buy 1 percent of global production, 95 percent of which is used in our ice cream, including in our biggest global ice cream brand Magnum and in Ben & Jerry’s.”
Monday’s press release from Barry Callebaut about the new partnership terms notes that “Barry Callebaut has also been working closely with Unilever to meet its sustainable cocoa sourcing commitments.”
CNN Friday 20 January ran a major investigative news background story on child labour in the cocoa industry, which has resulted in some calls for boycotting chocolate. As part of the network’s series, it contacted the chocolate industry for companies’ responses.
The Zurich company has been addressing the issue for some time and has considerable consumer information on the industry-wide problem.
Details of the deal were not revealed.
Chocolate Week celebrates artisanal chocolate in Lake Geneva region
Switzerland signs major new cocoa agreement
Swiss artisanal chocolate comes in a wide variety of forms, but also flavours / chocolate sheets from Tristan, Bougy-Villars, canton Vaud
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Chocolate is very much in the news in Switzerland this week, with cantons Fribourg, Geneva and Vaud celebrating chocolate week and the federal government signing the International Cocoa Agreement to support the cocoa production industry and encourage sustainable development and fair trade policies.
Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest supplier of top quality chocolate and cocoa products, added its own sweet news Thursday 4 November with positive results for fiscal year 2009/2010: profits up 10.9 percent to CHF251.7 million.
The Zurich company’s turnover was CHF5.21 billion francs, up 6.8 percent and it says it now looks for 6-8 percent growth in production volume in the next three years.
70% of world cocoa comes from W Africa, says the World Cocoa Foundation (chart: Barry Callebaut, Zurich)
The company has 7,500 employees in 26 countries, with 40 production facilities. It is active in sustainable development efforts in the cocoa industry, pointing out in its reports that without cocoa, there would be no chocolate, and a viable cocoa industry is therefore an “imperative” for the company. It is a key member of the World Cocoa Foundation, created in 2000 to improve cocoa production conditions, with cocoa a product supplied almost entirely by developing countries.
Switzerland signs International Cocoa Accord
Switzerland Wednesday 3 November announced that it is signing the 2010 International Cocoa Agreement, which creates a discussion forum for producers, consumers, NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and governments that will initially look at how to create a certification system for cocoa.
Bulk of world cocoa producers very poor
Updated 10 April 13:10 London, England and Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mars has become the latest chocolate maker to go green with its products, making a commitment ” to spend tens of millions of dollars annually certifying that the cocoa used in the $10bn of chocolate products it sells every year is sustainably sourced by 2020,” reports the Financial Times. Mars claims to be the world’s largest end-user of chocolate. The company joins Cadbury (whose European head office is in Rolle, Vaud, Switzerland), the largest chewing gum and sweets maker in the world, which has a significant chocolate business. Cadbury announced in March that it would increase direct Fair Trade buying from farmers, spending £45 million in the next 10 years to “to secure the sustainable socio-economic future of cocoa farming in Ghana, India, Indonesia and the Caribbean where the cocoa farming industry is facing increasing challenges.”
