Tony’s Chocolonely is inviting chocolate makers around the globe to join Tony’s Open Chain on their mission to make 100% slave free the norm in chocolate.
Tony’s Open Chain is an initiative to collaborate on sourcing cocoa using Tony’s 5 Sourcing Principles to tackle illegal child labor and modern slavery by addressing poverty. The platform has been scaled up to include cocoa butter, enabling all types of chocolate to be produced. A plugand-play set-up now also allows new mission allies to onboard in just a few months and become sustainability frontrunners by next cocoa season.
Tony’s Open Chain is designed so that all chocolate-making companies can take responsibility for an open and transparent supply chain, where issues are brought out in the open so they can be solved. The initiative implements an efficient and practical framework for fair sourcing practices following Tony’s 5 Sourcing Principles: using 100% traceable cocoa beans, paying a higher price, strengthening farmer cooperatives, engaging in long-term direct trading partnerships, and focusing on cocoa quality and productivity to optimize cocoa yields.
As Paul Schoenmakers, Head of Impact at Tony’s Chocolonely explained: “Since the launch of Tony’s Open Chain in 2019, we’ve figured out exactly how to turn our great ideas for sparking change in the chocolate industry into an even greater reality. Now, we’ve made it as easy as possible for all chocolate brands to join Tony’s Open Chain and assume responsibility for human rights and sustainability issues such as deforestation in their cocoa supply chain. Everything we build in Tony’s Open Chain focuses on making it scalable and replicable, while keeping the model credible. Only together we’ll make chocolate 100% slave-free.”
As part of paving the way for new partners, Tony’s has expanded the initiative to also include 100% traceable cocoa butter, the key ingredient in white chocolate. This latest addition means that Tony’s Open Chain is now available for all types of chocolate. Furthermore, sourcing cocoa butter through Tony’s Open Chain means that the bean volume demand has almost tripled in 2020/2021, creating an immediate positive impact with cocoa farmers: more beans means more impact. As a result, the platform’s first mission ally, leading Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn, has now completed the goal of transforming its entire Delicata range supply chain.
Following these milestones, Tony’s Open Chain is ready for more global mission allies to join, and new partners will be announced in the early months of 2021.
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Media contact
Kiran Grewal
Editor, International Confectionery
Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922
Email: editor@in-confectionery.com
