We take great pride and care in how we source the amazing Pacific products that make up our chocolate.
Key sourcing principles for us include paying farmers and producers a fair price and sourcing premium grade products from the Pacific Islands.
The effort and cost involved in finding and importing these products from the Pacific is very challenging and an expensive exercise, but we believe it is at the heart of what we do. Each time you take a bite of one of our chocolates, you are tasting amazing artisan delights that are crafted from products straight out of the Pacific Islands.
Cacao beans
We use ethically sourced, sundried cacao beans from the Solomon Islands through our partnership with Makira Gold.
These Cacao farmers are paid double what they would otherwise be paid for supplying into the commodity confectionary market. The commodity market is the standard chocolate and confectionary that you would buy from supermarket shelves, full of high amounts of sugar and other low cost fillers.
Our cacao beans do not need to be fumigated as they are carefully stored in insectproof GrainPro bags from farm to our small chocolate production in Sydney.
The beans are all naturally organic, grown without the use of pesticides or inorganic fertilisers.
Depending on seasonal availability and other factors, we use a range of beans that come from different farmers and different islands across the Solomons including Diana Yates in Guadalcanal, Philip Lepping in Temotu, or farmers from Makira and even the Marovo lagoon.
Vanilla Beans
We source our Vanilla Beans from farming co-operatives in Papua New Guinea, including a Wildlife Conservation Society supported cooperative of 150 families in Manus Island, and Maligaini Agriculture Producers, a farming cooperative in the East Sepik region.
Coconut
Our Desiccated Coconut comes from Islands’ Own in the Solomon Islands. Another wonderful locally owned company in the Solomon Islands that is seeking to change lives. See their story here.
Cacao Butter
Our Cacao Butter is a critical ingredient for our chocolate products. It is very difficult to source from the Pacific due to the extensive facilities required to produce high quality Cacao butter. We source our cacao butter from Papua New Guinea, from the Queen Emma chocolate company.