Barry Callebaut focusing on sustainability in Mexico

Barry Callebaut has three sites in Mexico and its own Chocolate Academy. The manufacturer of chocolate and cocoa products is focusing on sustainable production and has committed to every chocolate under its brand Cacao Barry being made using 100 percent sustainable cocoa, as Ofelia Elias explained in Mexican business and economics newspaper El Economista. She is Senior Brand Manager Mexico & Latin America at the Barry Callebaut Group with headquarters in Mexico City.

“Thanks to our partnership with the Cocoa Horizons Foundation, which has the mission of improving the lives of farmers, eradicating child labor and bringing us closer to our goal of achieving a positive impact on deforestation and our carbon footprint by 2025, 100 percent of the cocoa beans we use today are supporting sustainable cocoa sourcing,” Elias explained. From September 2021 to February 2022, 218 farmer groups worldwide delivered cocoa to Horizons. According to the article, 247,062 farmers are registered in the program, including 51,101 women.

“Our greatest challenge is to reduce the carbon footprint of cocoa farming by 2025 by training farmers in sustainable cultivation methods, planting trees to improve diversity, raising farmers’ income and offering farmers cookstoves to stop the burning of wood, which leads to deforestation,” said Ofelia Elias.

Barry Callebaut with headquarters in Zurich has three production facilities in Mexico, in Escobedo, Toluca de Lerdo and Mexico City. This is also where the company’s Chocolate Academy is based, with the „centro de formación“ (training center) México.