Cocoa. Our unique know-how.
Cocoa a distinctive ingredient, used in chocolate for its remarkable combination of flavour and taste, we carefully select and process it for some of our most loved products.
Experts at cocoa processing
Through the years we have developed unique expertise in combining and processing different cocoa beans to create the special aroma and taste of our recipes.
Once the cocoa beans have been removed from the ripe fruit, they are left to ferment for a week, usually under banana leaves, to allow the natural flavours and aromas to develop, then they are dried for five days before being shipped to our factories. Here they undergo our rigorous quality controls: organoleptic, physical, chemical and microbiological checks. We then further dry the beans and grind them into a mill that separates the edible ground nibs from the skin. Here, the ground nibs are roasted to enhance their aroma and colour.
Because we roast most of the beans ourselves we can constantly monitor their fragrance, quality and freshness. We then grind the roasted nibs to obtain a cocoa mass that is pressed to separate the cocoa butter from the cocoa "cake". Lastly, we break the cocoa “cake” to get the cocoa powder that we use in our recipes.
The cocoa mass, rich in precious cocoa butter and mixed with other ingredients, is then processed and this creates the Kinder dark chocolate. If added with different percentages of whole milk powder, it creates different kinds of milk chocolates used for our Kinder treats. The cocoa mass is even used to produce the cocoa coating which is used in products such as our Kinder Delice.
Supporting Farmers
Cocoa is mainly produced in developing countries by smallholder farmers who face various economic, social, and environmental issues, such as lack of access to resources, limited knowledge of good agricultural practices, and climate change.
Through our sustainability programme for cocoa, we support farmers in adopting sustainable agricultural practices aimed at fostering sustainable livelihood while respecting the local communities and the environment. We also help them to diversify their incomes to reduce poverty and related issues as well as increasing the resilience of their communities.
We actively support initiatives that have a broader scope than our direct supply chain and aim at protecting cocoa farming communities and their environment. To do so, we have been a member of the International Cocoa Initiative since 2008 , and the World Cocoa Foundation since 2005.
In early 2021, we also partnered with the NGO ‘Save the Children’ to protect children’s rights and promote education in cocoa growing communities in West Africa.
