Asia's craft chocolate explosion

Fruity flavour, a rich aroma - you might think this is about wine, but it’s not. It’s about chocolate: craft chocolate to be specific. 

The craft chocolate industry is burgeoning around the world - and Asia - and one Kiwi is delivering it straight to your doorstep 

Luke Owen Smith owns and operates Wellington-based company, The Chocolate Bar. 

He sources craft chocolate bars, often going direct to the makers in other countries, and packages them up in a subscription box for his customers, as well as providing tasting courses and an online shop.  

On his journey to find unique craft bars, he’s found contributors to the craft chocolate community popping up around the world and in Asia – including Thailand and Indonesia. 

The Chocolate Bar founder Luke Owen Smith. Photo: Supplied/Luke Owen Smith

“It’s a very small but fast-growing industry,” he said, “Globally last year, chocolate sales grew about five percent, but craft chocolate sales grew about 15 percent. It’s still a speck in the ocean of the chocolate industry but it’s definitely growing.” 

He described the USA as the “hub” of craft chocolate, but the farmers growing the cacao beans are often found within 10 to 15 degrees of the equator. More and more often, their beans are being made into chocolate in-country.  

And while West Africa – particularly Ghana and the Ivory Coast – are some of the biggest producers of cacao in the world, countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India have seen a dramatic rise in both the amount of farmers growing cacao beans and in the number of new chocolate makers that have appeared. 

Owen Smith pointed to Vietnam as one of the frontrunners in terms of craft chocolate producers across Asia, but he also highlighted Thailand, which has seen an “explosion” in production in the last five years. 

“There were basically no craft chocolate makers there but in 2018, there were suddenly 10 – 15 craft chocolate makers in Thailand. It was a very sudden thing.” 

The craft chocolate industry has seen a boom recently - partly due to a rising number of people learning about the industry. Photo: Supplied/Luke Owen Smith

It’s complex, Owen Smith said, to explain why it’s only recently taken off – especially since Thailand is in many ways an idea place to grow cacao.  

According to the chocolate-focused Cacao magazine, cacao was first bought to Thailand decades ago by large chocolate manufacturers for the express purpose of producing chocolate. 

The south of Thailand proved to have the tropical environment cacao beans grow best in, but despite that the crop never really took off and in the 1980s, Indonesia and Malaysia’s cacao industries overtook Thailand’s. Many farmers left cacao behind and turned to rubber trees instead. 

Owen Smith said cacao had never been thought of as a “high value crop”. 

“Farmers in Thailand had better options for what they can grow and make money doing,” he said. 

“But there’s a movement towards people producing chocolate in the same country where the beans grow. In exporting a finished chocolate bar, you make a lot more money on that than on selling the raw ingredients.” 

Despite this boom, international and Asian craft chocolate can be tricky to find in New Zealand.  

A sample of the chocolate sourced by The Chocolate Bar. Photo: Supplied/Luke Owen Smith

You might occasionally spot some on supermarket shelves – such as Vietnam’s Marou chocolate – but many other international chocolate makers struggle to find space in the New Zealand market.  

“As an example, we sourced Kad Kokoa from Thailand, who are regarded as the best craft chocolate maker in Thailand. And it was the only time it had ever been available in New Zealand,” Owen Smith said. 

It was the limited options for craft chocolate in New Zealand that sparked Owen Smith to start The Chocolate Bar in 2015.  

“I had never heard about [craft chocolate]. I was a chocolate fan at the time, but normal chocolate - your standard supermarket chocolate,” Owen Smith said. 

At the time, there were only about three New Zealand companies supplying craft chocolate.  

“Imagine you just discovered wine, but you could only buy three kinds of wine. I had to taste more, I had to find more.” 

Owen Smith started sourcing chocolate from overseas and started thinking next steps – how could he bring craft chocolate to New Zealand? And how could he start educating people on it? 

“It’s a challenge because [the industry] is very young and there’s still a lot of education to be done worldwide about getting people to understand why this bar of chocolate costs $13. But it is happening.” 

A lot of the cost comes down to craft chocolate’s ethical supply chains. 

Owen Smith takes care when scouting out new chocolate companies to make sure he can trace the supply chains. His search takes him through contacts in the tight-knit craft chocolate industry, as well as through Instagram – a big place to find new makers, he said. 

“We’ve featured chocolate from quite a few Asian makers.  

“A lot of them are very new companies. This is quite a new movement of these sort of small-scale craft chocolate makers based at-origin. It’s very much at the forefront of what’s happening in chocolate.” 

- Asia Media Centre