Swiss manufacturing giant Bühler Group has named three winners of its New Chocolate Challenge, which aims to industrialise climate-resilient cocoa-free ingredients.
Foreverland, Green Spot Technologies and Kawa Project have all won Bühler Group’s future-friendly chocolate innovation programme.
Recognised for their cocoa-free ingredients, they emerged victorious from a pool of over 50 applicants to the New Chocolate Challenge, which sought to find sustainable solutions for an industry marred by climate change.
The winning startups worked with Bühler to develop cocoa-free chocolate prototypes at its facility in Uzwil, Switzerland, which were then showcased at a tasting event in Chicago last week. Now, they will continue to work on scaling up and commercialising their solutions.
What Bühler saw in the cocoa-free challenge winners
The New Chocolate Challenge was announced in August, focusing on three cocoa-free innovation routes: plant-based or upcycled sidestreams to deliver chocolate-like flavours and textures, biomass or precision fermentation to produce essential chocolate compounds (like flavours and lipids), and cell-culture approaches directly leveraging cocoa cells.
The top three startups were chosen in October, when they advanced to full-scale trials at the Bühler Chocolate Research and Training Center, testing their cocoa alternatives on industrial equipment.
Here, they worked with Bühler’s experts to create prototypes and develop a pathway for a viable product from lab to industrial scale. They addressed critical issues, like the impact novel ingredients have on the production process, whether existing assets for natural cocoa should be used, and what adaptations are required.
Foreverland, based in Puglia, Italy, modernises the carob-based chocolate substitutes of the previous century with fermentation. Its ingredient, called Choruba, valorises a widely wasted food (90% of the carob fruit is discarded globally, with the seeds used for locust bean gum) and lowers water consumption by 90% and emissions by 80%, compared to conventional chocolate.
Green Spot Technologies takes a similar approach, upcycling commercial food waste by fermenting it into functional ingredients. Its cocoa-free solutions are made from fava bean fibres and grape skins, and are sold under the Milatea brand as powders, chocolate chips, and fillings. It recently raised €5M in funding to scale up these innovations.
Finally, Kawa Project uses spent coffee grounds from industrial breweries and employs a proprietary extraction and refining method to produce a powder that can be used as a substitute for alkalised cocoa powder in baking applications.
Big Chocolate is going cocoa-free
Bühler’s focus on chocolate alternatives comes in a year when cocoa prices have broken all-time records, thanks in large part to the climate crisis.
Over 70% of cocoa-producing areas Africa experienced an extra six weeks of days above 32°C last year, with extreme weather and crop diseases hitting plantations hardest in the Ivory Coast and Ghana. These are the two biggest producers of the crop, and they have already lost over 85% of their forest cover since 1960. Now, scientists warn that a third of cocoa trees could die out by 2050.
Compounding the issue is the fact that the industry itself is a driver of climate change. Producing chocolate emits more greenhouse gases than any other food except beef, and making a single bar requires 1,700 litres of water on average. Further, the industry is the source of widespread deforestation and food waste.
The cocoa crisis has prompted the industry to look for sustainable alternatives, resilient to climate change and supply shocks. This is where Bühler’s New Chocolate Challenge came in, connecting innovative startups with established giants like Hershey’s, Cargill, Puratos, Nestlé, Mars, Nutriart, Barry Callebaut, and the IRCA Group, which partnered with the competition.
Many of these companies have seen their businesses impacted. Hershey’s announced a double-digit hike in product prices and cut its annual forecast, while Barry Callebaut (the world’s largest B2B chocolate supplier) has struck partnerships to explore both cell-based and cocoa-free chocolate.
Puratos, Cargill and Mondelēz International have in alt-chocolate startups too, and Nestlé has invented a new production method that uses up 30% more of the cocoa fruit, and Mars is working with Pairwise’s CRISPR gene-editing tech to develop of disease- and climate-resilient cacao crops.
“Cocoa price volatility is a wake-up call. Through our New Chocolate Challenge, we’re mobilising the ecosystem to explore credible, scalable cocoa alternatives while leveraging existing assets wherever possible,” said Thierry Duvanel, innovation director at Bühler North America. “Our goal is to help the industry deliver outstanding chocolate experiences with greater resilience and sustainability.”
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