Have you ever asked your­self why lo­cal­ly made choco­lates are more ex­pen­sive than choco­lates im­port­ed from over­seas?

Well, it’s a ques­tion that Niki­ta Nath, the di­rec­tor and bean to bar choco­late mak­er of the Or­ti­no­la Great House has heard of­ten enough.

And the ques­tion was raised again when Episode 2 of the Trini­tario Co­coa we­bi­nar was held last week Wednes­day. The we­bi­nar was a col­lab­o­ra­tive project be­tween In­vesTT and the Del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union in T&T.

The pan­el dis­cus­sion was ti­tled Trail­blaz­ing Women En­tre­pre­neurs in T&T’s co­coa val­ue chain and fea­tured Eliz­a­beth “La­dy” Mon­tano, Is­abel Brash and Nath.

The we­bi­nar’s host Jessie-May Ven­tour high­light­ed ques­tions posed by the at­ten­dees.

“We have some­one ex­press­ing con­cern about how ex­pen­sive our lo­cal­ly made choco­lates are,” Ven­tour said.

Ven­tour asked the pan­el­lists if they were will­ing to re­spond to the con­cern.

“I get this ques­tion al­most every sin­gle time I have a tour and I am hap­py to get it be­cause it means you have tried lo­cal choco­late,” Nath said.

Nath ar­gued one of the main is­sues that caus­es this price dis­crep­an­cy is that craft choco­late mak­ers are work­ing with economies of scale.

“For ex­am­ple, a small co­coa grinder can run you US$700 plus the as­so­ci­at­ed ship­ping and du­ty. Let’s say I want a 500 kilo­gramme ma­chine from Scot­land that can run 450 ki­los that is cost­ing me £80,000. One, it is ex­treme­ly ex­pen­sive and if you look at man­u­fac­tur­ing in any field, no ma­chin­ery is re­al­ly go­ing to cut down on the cost of pro­duc­tion,” she said.

A cocoa podA cocoa podA cocoa podA cocoa pod

“Sec­ond­ly when you look at the beans, here our beans are more ex­pen­sive. I don’t want to go too far but I can tell you that West Africa, which pro­duces the ma­jor­i­ty of the world’s co­coa, they un­for­tu­nate­ly do not get a great price for beans.

“Our beans in T&T and fine flavour coun­tries are dou­ble the price and when you look at a com­mer­cial choco­late bar, the per­cent­age of fine or flavour beans might be about five per cent. The rest of the beans may be bulk co­coa or what we call cheap­er co­coa and we sim­ply can­not com­pete,” Nath said.

“The third thing I am leav­ing you with, go back to wher­ev­er you are from and grab a craft choco­late, 80 per cent and grab a sort of more mass pro­duced 80 per cent bar, eat them to­geth­er and the sto­ry is fin­ished. You will not be­lieve the dif­fer­ence in taste and ex­pe­ri­ence that you can savour,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Bar and Co­coa web­site, de­scrib­ing a food as “craft” im­plies an el­e­va­tion, a longevi­ty and ded­i­ca­tion to per­fec­tion—or as close as you can get to it.

“What dis­tin­guish­es a craft choco­late from a mass-mar­ket choco­late is the hu­man touch and trans­for­ma­tion present in its every el­e­ment,” it stat­ed.

One of the we­bi­nar’s at­ten­dees said it was like “com­par­ing chalk with cheese, and ex­pen­sive cheese at that.”

“They are two dif­fer­ent prod­ucts and two dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion mod­els,” Ven­tour stat­ed as she read the at­tendee’s com­ment.

Mon­tano, a di­rec­tor of Mon­tano’s Choco­late Com­pa­ny, said: “When you want some­thing of qual­i­ty you have to pay for qual­i­ty.”

“The Trini­tario co­coa bean speaks for it­self and some­times when we eat these choco­lates, yes they are cheap, but it is not made of Trini­tario co­coa. Some­times the labour that goes in­to mak­ing it and that goes in­to get­ting the co­coa beans is very cheap so that they can af­ford to sell it at that price. But again when you want qual­i­ty you have to spend a few more dol­lars,” Mon­tano said.

Is­abel Brash, the choco­late mak­er and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Co­co­bel Choco­late, stat­ed that choco­late should not be cheap be­cause of the process in­volved in mak­ing it.

“I think that it was wrong in the be­gin­ning and that is what hap­pened. So now we have to ex­plain over 200 years lat­er bad busi­ness. Choco­lates should not be cheap. It re­al­ly should not. I think we are mak­ing up for a lot of mis­takes and that is just how it is,” Brash said.

Ac­cord­ing to re­cent da­ta it is es­ti­mat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 to 80 per cent of women are in­volved in the val­ue added prod­ucts co­coa val­ue chain in this coun­try.

Mon­tano, Brash and Nath were asked to share what they con­sid­ered their keys to suc­cess.

Cocoa being driedCocoa being dried

Mon­tano list­ed the Trini­tario co­coa as one of the main fac­tors.

“Most im­por­tant we are from par­adise, we are from T&T and we are af­ford­ed the Trini­tario co­coa bean that was made here. It came by chance but we can count our­selves as be­ing one of eight coun­tries that pro­duce pure­ly 100 per cent fine flavoured co­coa beans,” Mon­tano said.

“Around 1678 a hy­brid be­tween the Criol­lo and Foras­tero trees orig­i­nat­ed in T&T,” the T&T Fine Co­coa Com­pa­ny stat­ed.

Known for the flo­ral, fruity char­ac­ter­is­tics, Trini­tario is the pre­dom­i­nant fine flavour choco­lates to­day.

In the 19th cen­tu­ry Trini­tario trees spread across the globe and can be found in Venezuela, Ecuador, Cameroon, Samoa, Sri Lan­ka, Ja­va and Papua New Guinea.

“We al­so be­lieve in core val­ues. And I think this has con­tributed a lot to our suc­cess. Hard work, ex­cel­lence in what­ev­er you do, al­ways try to be ex­cel­lent in what­ev­er ven­ture you take. Be­liev­ing in our­selves and we be­lieve that every­thing we do we can have suc­cess at and any­thing we have con­trol over we can make a suc­cess,” Mon­tano said.

Brash laud­ed her sup­port sys­tem.

Nath list­ed “vi­sion and per­se­ver­ance” as her dri­ving force.

“My fa­ther, 20 years ago when he start­ed, it was very dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to see where he was go­ing. What are we do­ing with this old house. Vi­sion is fine but with­out per­se­ver­ance you are not go­ing to get very far,” Nath said.

“Hav­ing been on this Or­ti­no­la jour­ney for the last ten to 12 years with my par­ents and my fam­i­ly, I can re­al­ly see when times get tough per­se­ver­ance is what keeps you go­ing and gets you go­ing and leads ul­ti­mate­ly to your suc­cess,” she said.

Mon­tano lament­ed the bar­ri­ers to en­ter­ing new mar­kets as a chal­lenge.

“The prob­lem we en­coun­tered was main­ly en­try bar­ri­ers. If you want to go over­seas so many dif­fer­ent re­quire­ments. What is called for in the US may not be re­quired in Eu­rope,” Mon­tano said.

Nath said when she first start­ed mak­ing choco­late she faced a prob­lem she did not ini­tial­ly know how to re­solve.

“I spent six months with my bars con­tin­u­ous­ly com­ing out streaky. It was very vex­ing to say the least I asked every­one I could think about and no one could fig­ure it out. I then re­alised that my fridge was not cold enough, my room wasn’t cold enough and my tem­per­a­ture was prob­a­bly slight­ly off,” she said.

Nath said she is now able to mea­sure tem­per­a­ture by the back of her hand, with­out even us­ing a ther­mome­ter

“I had to re­search, I bought a tem­per­ing ma­chine, in­vest­ed in some very ex­pen­sive ther­mome­ters and ma­te­r­i­al, good scrap­ers, good moulds. Ba­si­cal­ly it was tri­al and er­ror and self-di­rect­ed learn­ing has helped me a lot. I am a read­er by na­ture and that is ex­treme­ly use­ful be­cause in the val­ue chain, choco­late is half sci­ence and half art,” she said.

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