Vietnam creates its first carbon-neutral chocolate

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Jan 11

Global ingredients group Puratos is making big strides towards its ambitious sustainability goal of becoming completely carbon neutral by 2025.

Just this week (10th January, 2023) Gricha Safarian, Shareholder and Managing Director of Puratos Grand-Place Indochina (a joint venture between Putratos and Grand Place Holding in Vietnam), announced on LinkedIn that its “Chocolanté 60DAYS series” has officially been awarded “Carbon Neutral Certification” issued by CO2logic, a South Pole company that specialises in environmental impact assessments. This guarantees that the product can carry climate-related labelling and a carbon-neutral story saying that the product actively “calculates, reduces and offsets its carbon footprint” in an effort to tackle climate change.

Proudly made in Vietnam

The novel chocolate product is proudly made in Vietnam and is the result of a reinvented chocolate process that combines fermentation in wooden acacia boxes and slow-roasting to produce carbon-neutral tree-to-bar 60DAYS chocolate. With close proximity to the source in Ben Tre and rapid transition, most of the oxidation by light and air as well as emissions is eliminated, according to Gricha Safarian.

The assessment included an evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions across all activities from beginning to end. These include purchasing, transportation, manufacturing and shipping activities in the production of Puratos’s Chocolanté 60DAYS series - its first carbon-neutral-certified product.

Consumers are increasingly seeking environmentally-friendly consumer goods

The award marks a continuing effort and commitment towards the company’s sustainability goal and climate accountability. In December 2021, PGPI also became the first entity under the Puratos Group to be awarded the “Climate Neutral Certificate” for its business operations. According to 2022 Cocoa Barometer, carbon-neutral certification is highly valuable and coveted in the cocoa industry, which has been scrutinized for its endemic sustainability issues including child labour and deforestation.

According to a recent study, more consumers (almost a quarter) will choose a more environmentally-friendly product when presented with fast food products labelled as having high climate impact. Thus, net zero or carbon zero certification and products are becoming more ubiquitous, with Nestlé publicizing sustainability endeavors and even Morrisons releasing a zero-carbon egg range.

Puratos’s Chocolanté 60Day series is presently available in Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, France, and Belgium and will soon be available for other European customers in Italy. Shop Puratos 60-Day Carbon-Neutral Chocolate in Vietnam.