Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (THIT) is promis­ing to raise the bar in the choco­late in­dus­try.

The Mt St George School and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fine Co­coa Com­pa­ny (Trini­tario) signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) yes­ter­day and launched a choco­late lab, giv­ing stu­dents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to use their cre­ativ­i­ty to trans­form lo­cal Trini­tario beans in­to world-class de­lights.

The ini­tia­tive was hailed by Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Or­lan­do Kerr, who said the Ed­u­ca­tion Di­vi­sion is man­dat­ed to de­vel­op in­no­va­tors and an en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it.

The MoU pro­vides for co-op­er­a­tion in tech­ni­cal train­ing, recipe de­vel­op­ment, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach.

Kerr said while Trini­tario co­coa beans and its choco­late prod­ucts are al­ready world-renowned, there is still tremen­dous un­tapped po­ten­tial in the in­dus­try.

“We must be­come bet­ter at adding val­ue to what al­ready ex­ists. There is val­ue in grow­ing co­coa, but there is greater val­ue in pro­cess­ing it, trans­form­ing it in­to choco­late, de­vel­op­ing recipes and pre­mi­um prod­ucts, in­cor­po­rat­ing those prod­ucts in­to ho­tels and restau­rants, and cre­at­ing busi­ness and ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties. That is what eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion looks like,” he said.

Health Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor im­plored stu­dents to be mind­ful of the chron­ic dis­eases on the is­land, as healthy prod­ucts are need­ed on the shelves.

She al­so en­cour­aged the stu­dents to ex­per­i­ment with lo­cal fruits to give the lo­cal choco­lates a unique flavour.

“Some­times we live among valu­able things so long that we stop see­ing the val­ue in them. All the fruits that are wast­ing, the ones you com­plain­ing that you have to clean up from the back of your house – let us not for­get that it may be the sin­gle in­gre­di­ent that makes our choco­late more valu­able,” she said.

Breb­nor said the tra­di­tions of danc­ing the co­coa would com­ple­ment a thriv­ing choco­late in­dus­try and at­tract vis­i­tors to the is­land.

Mean­while, Ce­cile Tassin, Am­bas­sador of the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) del­e­ga­tion, af­firmed the EU’s sup­port for Trinidad and To­ba­go and the rest of the Caribbean in de­vel­op­ing its co­coa in­dus­try. She said the EU has helped de­vel­op the Co­coa Re­search Unit at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, aid­ed the de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean Fine Co­coa Fo­rum and sup­port­ed ex­changes with choco­latiers from Trinidad and To­ba­go vis­it­ing Grena­da and Bel­gium.

“That spir­it of part­ner­ship is pre­cise­ly what we are cel­e­brat­ing to­day. I hope that this fa­cil­i­ty will in­spire young Trin­bag­o­ni­ans to see the pos­si­bil­i­ty that ex­ists in their own com­mu­ni­ties to be­come chefs, choco­latiers, en­tre­pre­neurs, in­no­va­tors and ex­porters.”

UK en­voy Jon Dean hailed the lab as an in­vest­ment in peo­ple as he not­ed lo­cal co­coa beans helped es­tab­lish Britain’s choco­late in­dus­try and set the stan­dard for com­pa­nies such as Cad­bury.

“To­day, as de­mand grows for pre­mi­um choco­late, Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­cep­tion­al­ly well placed to build on that lega­cy. T&T pro­duces some of the world’s finest co­coa. It’s in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised fine flavour co­coa in­creas­ing­ly ap­peals to con­sumers in UK and be­yond.”

Dean said the High Com­mis­sion will con­tin­ue to sup­port lo­cal skills de­vel­op­ment while help­ing lo­cal com­pa­nies es­tab­lish trade link­ages in the UK mar­ket.