Smarter Cocoa Meeting - London, 2024

Article by: Sofia Scharrer

At the end of July, our global and regional cocoa sustainability team convened in London for a strategy meeting, with regional sustainability managers traveling from Mexico and Côte d’Ivoire. This gathering provided a valuable opportunity to discuss the future of the Smarter Cocoa Charter, explore challenges, and identify opportunities to enhance our impact.

Thanks to the dedication and efforts of our teams, we have made strong progress against our KPIs since the introduction of the Charter in 2021. We are pleased to report that we have successfully completed all nine of our KPIs for 2023 KPIs (for more info, please see our 2023 Cocoa Sustainability Report). 

One key reason for the meeting was to discuss the development and adaptation of the global cocoa sustainability strategy and the specific KPIs driven by it. After three years of active implementation, we've recognized that overarching global KPIs may not be the most effective path to achieving sustainability in different origins. Contextual differences and varying supply chains make it challenging to standardize approaches, revealing that a one-size-fits-all strategy can be counterproductive to our goals.

Having input from regional cocoa sustainability managers enabled us to better align our on-the-ground capabilities, identify realistic and proven interventions, and incorporate a diverse array of perspectives– essential for success in such an international environment. Receiving managerial-level insight into proposed solutions to effectively implement the necessary actions in origin countries will enable us to achieve the new and developed KPIs. 

The completion of the 2023 KPIs does not mean that we’ve fully achieved “sustainability”, but rather that we have managed to pave the way for further sustainability goals for ECOM and for cocoa farmers. Through our work in the field and our efforts to understand drivers of change, our Smarter Cocoa Charter is ever-evolving, and we place utmost importance on carefully developing and aligning our goals to the needs of the farmers we work with and the environment we operate in. 

It was fantastic to meet face-to-face with team members with whom we have all spent many hours on remote calls with. After three long meeting days, we managed to get out of the office and attended a chocolate-making workshop, as well as a tour of a regenerative wine farm and waste upcycling station. The whole week allowed us to connect as colleagues and our purpose in the sustainability team.

"Despite successfully achieving all our 2023 KPIs, we have a long path ahead of us as we build the evolution of our Smarter Cocoa strategy with our global and regional sustainability teams. The meeting provided valuable perspectives that will shape our future goals and drive our commitment to sustainable cocoa practices." — Ariana Carter, Global Cocoa Sustainability Lead