We’re bringing the majority of our cocoa supply closer to home, directly sourcing beans from Pacific growers, doubling down on our commitment to transparency and impact, and producing some of New Zealand’s best chocolate.
In 2021, we launched our Grower Partner Initiative, where we sourced premium beans directly from growers for our first single-origin Vanuatu bar. The success of this programme, along with improving infrastructure across the Pacific, means we can now source the quantities of cocoa we need to fuel the next growth stage of WCF.
What’s changing?
Eleven years ago, we began sourcing beans from Fairtrade and organic-certified Dominican Republic and Peru farms. Now, as we shift most of our cocoa supply to the Pacific, our bars will no longer carry these certifications, as the industry in the Pacific is still transitioning toward them.
Moving forward, we’re embracing a new level of transparency with you, our community. Through our direct sourcing relationships, we’re publishing the farmgate price - the exact amount we pay for our beans - so you can see the impact of our work firsthand.
Gabe Davidson, our co-founder, describes this milestone as the right thing to do and says it will help build the emerging premium cocoa market.
“We’ve wanted to do this for a long time - these growers are our neighbours, and our relationship with them goes back over a decade. We visit our suppliers regularly, have full visibility over their supply chain, and can see their cocoa trees are grown and harvested sustainably, meaning our commitment to quality and ethics is stronger than ever.
“By moving our sourcing to the Pacific, we’re in a prime position to help farmers lay the foundations for a robust and thriving premium cocoa industry. In the long-term, this will help more people stay in-country and work instead of heading overseas to pick fruit to support their families and villages,” he says.
What is a farmgate price, and what does it mean?
Our General Manager Matt Willams says most of the large and well-known chocolate brands are made from 'commodity' cocoa beans primarily sourced from West African countries like Ghana and the Ivory Coast. They pay the global market price set by financial markets for their cocoa - WCF’s farmgate price is substantially higher.
“Despite global record prices, the Ghanaian farmgate price is approximately only US $3070 per tonne, leading to farmers and their families living in poverty and working under challenging conditions, which encourages child slavery. In comparison, we currently pay our Pacific growers a minimum of $5500 a tonne, 81 per cent more than the West African farmgate price,” he says.
This milestone marks an exciting chapter in our journey. By sourcing from the Pacific, we aim to support the growth of the region’s emerging premium cocoa industry, empowering growers to build what promises to be a thriving future.
The importance of Fairtrade in the global cocoa market
Fairtrade has played a pivotal role in shaping who we are today, and we remain deeply aligned with their values. We will work with them as they explore options to bring more Pacific cocoa co-operatives under the Fairtrade umbrella. Currently, a handful of cocoa growers in Papua New Guinea are Fairtrade certified.
WCF’s ties to the Pacific run deep
Before Gabe Davidson, our co-founder opened the doors to WCF in 2013, he met a farmer in Bougainville who was about to give up on his cocoa farm after 50 years.
“He could only sell his beans through the commodity market and wasn’t making enough money to make it viable - and this is where our dream of sourcing directly from the Pacific took seed. He suggested I learn to sail and bring a boat to Bougainville so he could sell me his cocoa, and that’s how our Vaka voyage from Wellington to Papua New Guinea was born.”
Gabe Davidson
WCF then became the first chocolate maker to produce a single-origin chocolate bar using Bougainville cocoa.
Since 2013, Gabe has visited the region regularly, forging enduring relationships with our growers and suppliers - most recently heading to Vanuatu with Matt Williams, our General Manager, during the 2022/2023 season. Gabe even became a judge of the inaugural Solomon Islands’ chocolate competition, a significant event that now attracts chocolate makers from all over the globe to the Pacific.
We’ve seen firsthand how our partnerships empower communities, improving their farming practices and livelihoods; solar power to help dry the cocoa, water pumps, and even judging local chocolate-making competitions.
By shifting our sourcing to the Pacific, there’s a new world of opportunities for WCF and our growers - it’s the start of the next evolution of WCF.
