Nestlé continues progress with scaling-up Income Accelerator scheme for cocoa communities
Nestle has partnered with Rainforest Alliance for its Income Accelerator programme. Pic: Neill Barston
A key sustainability milestone for Nestlé has been delivered as its UK manufacturing facilities are set to feature cocoa sourced through its Income Accelerator programme supporting farmers in its core supply chains, including in West Africa, writes Neill Barston.
Confectionery Production reported on the media event at its York KitKat facilities, which also included a tour of its flagship manufacturing operations that turn out more than a billion bars a year for fans of the classic British brand (see an exclusive video of the visit below or via this link).
Under its latest initiative, the iconic chocolate series, along with Quality Street, Aero, After Eight, Yorkie, Rolo and Munchies, are all now using cocoa ingredients guaranteed to have been sourced from cocoa farming families including in Ivory Coast that are part of Nestlé’s Income Accelerator Programme which has gradually built up over the past two years.
As the company explained, this has built upon Nestlé’s Cocoa Plan, aiming to help close the living income gap of cocoa-farming families through a range of community engagement programmes, as well as tackling child labour issues that remain prominent within the broader sector.
From its initial pilot reaching 10,000 people, this year, the project was scaled-up to reach 30,000 families, with the company confirming that it intends to significantly ramp-up its operations to assist 160,000 farmers around the world in its supply chains.
Among its core partners in delivering the scheme is the Rainforest Alliance organisation (which will be joining this year’s World Confectionery Conference) and the venture incentivises and supports cocoa-farming families to enrol their children in school, implement good agricultural practices, engage in agroforestry activities, and diversify their incomes.
Gaining a living income
Notably, as Confectionery Production has covered, delivering on promises of a living income remains of central importance to the cocoa sector, with the issue of farmer pay being placed at the top of the agenda for the recent World Cocoa Conference. While progress has recently been made with both Ghana and Ivory Coast both raising their rates of pay for co-operatives to $2,470 a tonne, this remains significantly below rates achieved by Futures Markets for cocoa in New York and London, which have traded the crucial crop at around the $10,000 a tonne mark during the past month, though this has dipped slightly in recent weeks on global trading platforms.
As Nestle added, it has collaborated with a number of expert partners and suppliers to transform its global cocoa sourcing and achieve full traceability and physical segregation of the cocoa sourced from its income accelerator programme.
This means Nestlé is able to track the entire journey of cocoa beans from groups of farms to factory, while keeping them physically separated from other cocoa sources. The cocoa ingredients from the income accelerator programme adhere to one of the highest traceability standards, ensuring “mixed identity preserved” traceability, enabling cocoa to be traced and stored separately.
At Nestlé’s York site, up to 12,000 tonnes of cocoa ingredients are used every year to produce chocolate for a range of brands including KitKat, Quality Street, Aero, After Eight, Yorkie, Rolo and Munchies. Today’s news means that KitKat will feature on pack information where consumers can scan the QR code to learn more about how the programme works to benefit the livelihoods of cocoa farming families and their communities.
Speaking at the media launch event on the cocoa accelerator milestone, Mark Davies, Managing Director, Nestlé Confectionery UK & Ireland, acknowledged that there remained a number of challenges with the sector in terms of driving living standards within cocoa supply chains.
However, he expressed his optimism that genuine progress was continuing to be made with its own programmes, and he offered praise for industry partner Rainforest Alliance for bringing a heightened level of certification scrutiny to its operations around the world.
Davies (pictured below at the York site), said: “Announcing that all of our UK chocolate is now produced using cocoa ingredients sourced through the Income Accelerator Programme is a very significant milestone for Nestlé.
“Sourcing cocoa with this level of traceability, at the scale that Nestlé operates , is no mean feat. It has taken a lot of hard work by many people, but we know that there is still more to be done. “We will continue to push to make a positive impact on the lives of farmers and their communities and contribute to a more sustainable cocoa industry.
As the company confirmed, all of the cocoa Nestlé has sourced for chocolate in the UK & Ireland has been certified since 2015 as part of the Nescafé Cocoa Plan. Throughout 2024, Nestlé plans to use segregated cocoa butter for all of its KitKat chocolate in 29 countries in Europe, with plans to expand to other regions in the coming years.
Sharing his enthusiasm for the initiative, Kerry Daroci, Cocoa Lead at the Rainforest Alliance, added: “The Rainforest Alliance has a longstanding history with Nestlé and we’re pleased to be supporting its sustainable cocoa sourcing goals. Nestlé UK&I is using one of the highest levels of traceability, in which its cocoa can be traced back to Rainforest Alliance Certified farmers engaged in Nestlé’s Income Accelerator Programme.
“Achieving this level of traceability for all its UK chocolate serves as a significant benchmark for the industry and highlights the impact of collaboration on driving positive change for both farmers and the environment.”
- See the next edition of Confectionery Production magazine for an extended feature on the accelerator scheme and Nestle’s work with Rainforest Alliance backing cocoa communities.
