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we trace our cocoa from bean to bar

1 of Tony’s 5 Sourcing Principles is traceable beans. We use 100% traceable cocoa for our chocolate and, therefore, know exactly where our cocoa comes from. We have been doing this for our cocoa liquor since 2012 and for our cocoa butter since 2016.   To have fully transparent bean-to-bar traceability – meaning knowing the origin, the flow and the quantities of the beans – allows us to have insights that enable us to create a fairer supply chain based on a direct connection, creating accountability and the ability to take responsibility. The software system we use to trace our beans, built with ChainPoint technology, is called BeanTracker. 

The BeanTracker digitally logs the data collection from cooperative to chocolate production and includes a monitoring tool for all actors in the supply chain to see where the beans are at any particular moment in time. The sweet spot? All supply chain actors are connected on this shared value chain platform and enter data about ‘incoming bean volumes’, ‘beans volumes on stock’ and ‘bean volumes going out’. This tells us which cooperative the beans in each container come from. 

the cocoa supply chain 

The 2 countries we operate in – Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire – work slightly differently concerning the governmental regulations of cocoa export. But generally speaking, the farmers deliver their cocoa beans to the cooperative’s warehouse, where the beans are put into sacks. The sacks are then transported by truck to the local exporter’s warehouse. From there, they make their way to our cocoa processors and into our bars. And the rest, as they say, is history.. 

Our cocoa beans are kept separate throughout the entire process. This ensures that we can manage the flow of beans, and we also pay the Tony’s premium via the BeanTracker, so we also manage the flow of funds on here.

scaling up-up-up 

In the future, we'll also link various other data sources (e.g. GPS mapping data) in the BeanTracker, so we can see at a glance where our cocoa comes from and what the conditions are like for the farmers who grow it.

The goal is to make BeanTracker a scalable solution that is not just used by Tony's Chocolonely but that becomes the bean-to-bar standard for the entire cocoa industry. This will hopefully lead to a system change by implementing an industry standard for the traceability of bean-to-bar to enable all cocoa companies to take full responsibility for the whole supply chain.

This is why setting the right example with Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest cocoa processor, is so important. The installation of our own cocoa butter tank in the factory in 2016 was a major milestone on this journey. This shows that other players in the industry have no excuse – if we can do it, other (large) companies that work with Barry Callebaut can do it, too. That’s a wrap! 

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