Cocoa

Creating a fair and sustainable cocoa sector

Our challenges related to the cocoa sector

Our cocoa strategy is evolving to this day and it is structured around our three fundamental principles:

improving the living and working conditions of farmers,
protecting the environment
preserving the soil and flavors.

Improving conditions in schools and communities’ health and hygiene are major focus areas which improve our relationships on the ground, as are protecting forest areas and reducing carbon emissions.

The cocoa team is ramping up its commitment to its partners so that we can set up joint projects that impact producers’ and families’ living conditions.

Our objectives and progress

100% Traceability

of cocoa beans can be traced back to the producer. Target: maintain 100% by 2025.

60% Traceability

for cocoa beans from the farm parcel. Target: 100% by 2025.

93% of the producer countries

visited at least once per calendar year. Target: 100% by 2025.

14 countries

have a long-term partnership

99.8% of our cocoa

purchased through a partnership of at least 3 years.

8.5 years

average length of a partnership.

16,978 producers

Valrhona is keeping up its commitment to supporting cocoa suppliers

Valrhona has always placed great importance on both the quality and flavor of its chocolate and its commitment to creating a fair and sustainable cocoa industry that takes care of people and the planet.

Valrhona has been a pioneer in this regard, creating an expert team of sourcers who are dedicated solely to its cocoa supplies and developing direct, long-term relationships with producer organizations. Because we work so closely with our suppliers around the world, Valrhona has been able to strengthen its cocoa expertise by developing terroirs, varieties and different cultivation techniques.

For many years now, Valrhona has been fostering and implementing numerous projects to make its cocoa supplies more sustainable and resilient :

100% of our cocoa comes from long-term partnership contracts with cooperatives or plantations, each one averaging over 8.5 years in length.
100 % of the cocoa beans sourced by Valrhona can be traced back to the producer.
We are carrying out an ambitious mapping plan to identify protected areas and deforested zones. By 2022, 60% of cocoa plots had been mapped to ensure they were not in protected areas.
We visit and audit each of our suppliers at least once a year.

Our level of commitment was confirmed when we were awarded the B Corp label for a second time.

Looking ahead to 2030

Valrhona is continuing and strengthening its actions for a fair and sustainable cocoa industry. In practice, this means increased action on key cocoa supply chain issues such as:

Paying producers fair and equitable prices
Combating forced labor and child labor
Combating deforestation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Developing agroecological practices

Valrhona is driven by the desire to do things better while refusing easy options, so it involves all its employees and stakeholders in implementing its action plans.

At Valrhona, we are aware that minimum prices are not enough to guarantee a decent standard of living, and we are acting accordingly.

In Ivory Coast, over the last five years Valrhona has bought its cocoa at a price averaging 34% more than the minimum guaranteed by the state. Valrhona also gives producers a premium based on quality. In Ghana, in 2022, the premium per bag was increased by 40% to help producers cope with local inflation.

Consult our Fair Pricing policy

In West Africa, the NGO International Cocoa Initiative estimates that 1.56 million children are forced to work alongside their families. At Valrhona, we are aware of the need to do better and make every effort to combat child labor.

Valrhona has been committed to programs that facilitate and improve access to education since 2014.14 schools have been built and renovated in Ivory Coast, Ghana, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela supporting a total of 65 cohorts and 2,555 students.

Consult our Child Labor Policy

Valrhona relies on its long-term relationships with partners and producers as a means of supporting them in the fight against deforestation and global warming. We are committed to having no plots on protected land. By overlaying all our partner growers' plots onto each country’s official map, we can check that none are in a protected area.

At the same time, we are committed to reducing its carbon use across all emission scopes: we have a target of cutting our carbon emissions by 90% (compared with 2018) by 2050. So we have launched a program with the NGO Nitidæ to calculate our cocoa beans’ carbon footprint from the growing area itself. Since 2023, these field studies carried out and certified by the NGO have made it possible to survey, qualify and quantify the risk of deforestation over a 20-year period.

Consult our Zero deforestation policy

At Valrhona, we know that agroecology is a priority if we are to sustain cocoa-growing over the long term, so we have a responsibility to help our producers to adopt this practice.

Since 2015, we have been a founding member of the Cacao Forest project, a pioneering multi-sector initiative that aims to build a sustainable cocoa industry through agroforestry.

Between 2015 and 2022, several agroforestry models were tested in the Dominican Republic, and the most successful ones were identified and ready to be rolled out across the country. Since 2023, the Cacao Forest program has been developing a proposal for Ivory Coast.

Discover our Agroecology policy

Traceability underpins all our policies and ambitions and is a prerequisite for any environmentally and socially responsible business. It enables us to monitor, strengthen and orient our actions.

100% of Valrhona cocoa beans are traced from the producer. To go further, Valrhona is committed to extending its plot-based traceability so that we can gain even more visibility over production areas. By the end of 2022, 60% of our bean harvest had been geolocated and mapped - that is 6,951 producers with over 11,441 hectares of mapped plots.

Consult our approach to Traceability