Lindt & Sprüngli has teamed up with Swiss-Ghanaian start-up Koa to launch a new Excellence chocolate bar that is naturally sweetened using the cocoa pod’s pulp. Excellence Cacao Pur is made exclusively from the components of the cocoa pod – with 82% cocoa beans and 18% cocoa pulp from Koa – and no refined sugar.
With all ingredients extracted and processed from the cocoa pod, Lindt & Sprüngli says the bar has an initial fruity and sour taste, followed by intense cocoa notes. The company also claims that using Koa’s cocoa pulp provides an additional source of income to the cocoa farmers, as well as reduces food waste.
Excellence Cacao Pur joins Lindt & Sprüngli’s Excellence line of 21 bars including orange intense, 100% cocoa, chilli, and lemon with a touch of ginger. Lindt & Sprüngli’s new dark chocolate bar will be available from 22 February in limited numbers in Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland markets.
The release follows after the German family-owned company Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG announced its plans to launch a new product onto the market for chocolate bars. This product named “Cacao y Nada” was the first variety to be made of 100% cocoa. Natural cocoa juice is used for sweetening which Ritter extracts in an innovative process on its own El Cacao plantation in Nicaragua. But there is a problem in Germany: chocolate without any added sugar, the choocolate may not be labelled as chocolate in Germany.
The Cacao y Nada variety contains nothing but cocoa. It comprises cocoa mass, cocoa butter, cocoa powder and cocoa juice. Unlike previous chocolate varieties with 99/100% cocoa content, it does not have a bitter taste but is as pure and sweet as good chocolate should taste.
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Kiran Grewal
Editor, International Confectionery
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Email: editor@in-confectionery.com
