Indonesia and India to benefit from Mondelēz International's sustainability efforts

Company officials said the 'Cocoa Life' initiative is the world's largest sustainable cocoa program.

In Asia-Pacific it will cover Sumatra, Sulawesi and West Papula in Indonesia, India, Papua New Guinea and a host of Pacific Islands.

Cocoa Life will collaborate with Governments, civil society and suppliers with a mission to transform the cocoa supply chain. The company is already working with the United Nations Development Program, the World Wildlife Fund and Anti-Slavery International to develop a robust set of principles for success and ways to measure progress.

Cocoa Life is based on Mondelēz International’s previous Cadbury Cocoa Partnership in Ghana, India and the Dominican Republic. In Ghana, the Partnership has helped create a 20 percent increase in cocoa yields, a 200 percent increase in household incomes and an 80 percent increase in government-backed development projects in the first phases of the project between 2009 and 2011.

Sustainability has become a marketing buzzword among brands in the industry. Mars, for instance, plans to certify its entire cocoa production as sustainable by 2020. Within Mondelez International, the company plans to sustainably source 100 per cent of its European coffee by 2015. The initiative called ‘Coffee Made Happy’ will see the company invest around $200 million to empower 1 million coffee farming entrepreneurs by 2020.

“Our mission is to create thriving cocoa communities to help secure the future of the industry,” said Tim Cofer, executive vice president and president for Mondelez International, Europe. 

“We’re investing in much more than farming—it’s about empowering cocoa communities as a whole so cocoa farming villages become places where people want to live,” added Bharat Puri, senior vice president, Global Chocolate.