Supply Chain

Barry Callebaut Targets 100% Sustainable Chocolate by 2025

B2B chocolate giant Barry Callebaut has pledged to lead the charge to 100 percent cocoa and chocolate sustainability by 2025. This week, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality chocolate and cocoa products launched “Forever Chocolate,”a comprehensive sustainability strategy with four main goals that address the key sustainability challenges in the chocolate supply chain, namely to:

By Talia Rudee | Published 8 years ago | About a 3 minute read

B2B chocolate giant Barry Callebaut has pledged to lead the charge to 100 percent cocoa and chocolate sustainability by 2025. This week, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality chocolate and cocoa products launched “Forever Chocolate,”a comprehensive sustainability strategy with four main goals that address the key sustainability challenges in the chocolate supply chain, namely to:

Eradicate child labor from the supply chain
Lift more than 500,000 cocoa farmers out of poverty
Become carbon- and forest-positive
Source 100 percent sustainable ingredients in all products

“We have been pioneering sustainability in cocoa and chocolate for many years,” said Antoine de Saint-Affrique, CEO of Barry Callebaut. “But despite all our efforts, only 23 percent of the cocoa beans we source are from sustainability programs. We are determined to step change this and have 100 percent of our chocolate and its ingredient sustainably sourced by 2025.”

A partnership with SAP, announced in June, aims to focus on supply chain traceability, specifically through a cloud-based solution for cocoa bean traceability and better sustainability data management, developed with SAP. The platform allows tracking of cocoa beans produced in remote African locations to be tracked by mobile phone, which de Saint-Affrique says is essential to ensuring the group achieves its sustainability goals.

Cacao beans grow best in places where chocolate would melt in your hands, but over the next several decades, many of those environments may grow even warmer, drier and less suitable for its cultivation. This summer, the World Cocoa Foundation – whose members include Barry Callebaut, Cargill, Ecom Agrotrade, The Hershey Company, Lindt & Sprüngli, Mars, Inc, Nestlé, Olam International Ltd, and Touton - launched a program designed to strengthen collaboration between the public and private sector to address the issue by developing solutions and helping farmers adapt to climate change. Foundation members have partnered to develop a common strategy to address climate's impacts on cocoa and innovations to assist farmers in adapting to changing weather patterns, such as research and development of climate-resilient planting material, improved farming practices, and new agroforestry models.