Cocoa, chocolate shine at tenth UWI expo

IN celebration of TT’s rich cocoa heritage, the Cocoa Research Centre (CRC) of UWI held its tenth World Cocoa and Chocolate Day Expo at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Cultural Co-operation on November 29.

“It was conceived to give a space to chocolate makers initially to sell their chocolates, to interface with fellow chocolate makers and for the public to learn about our coca and now chocolate culture,” said Darin Sukha the acting director of CRC.

“But it has evolved so much since that time so now we have not only chocolate makers but people who do different things with chocolate. The chocolate space has been more sophisticated locally. People have bonbons, chocolate ice cream, gelatos, ponche de creme and a whole range of other products.

“Our intervention has supported and spawned a real rich coca and chocolate food culture and has added on to our rich heritage in cocoa.”

The expo featured a host of different businesses that make products like desserts and cosmetics from locally sourced cocoa.

Newsday spoke to Donna Mora, the CEO of the Lopinot Tourism Association, which manages the Lopinot Chocolate Company. Its display at the expo featured a wide range of cocoa-based products.

“So what we do is we mesh tourism and cocoa to make it into this awesome product. We have catered to people from Japan, Singapore, Norway, the UK and Australia and also hundreds of thousands of school children regionally and internationally.

“We have educational tours about cocoa and also the history of Lopinot. In the tours we also have a mini market where we sell everything in regards to cocoa. So here we have cocoa powder, chocolate, cocoa nibs, spices, cocoa wine and cocoa ponche de creme. Everything that can be made out of cocoa we try our hand at it."

The association was started by Mora’s father, Martin Gomez, one of the "legends" of Lopinot who discovered the now Martin Gomez Cave, His passion for tourism spread to his daughter who now heads the association promoting Lopinot’s rich history and TT”s cocoa culture.

In support of this, the CRC conducts extensive research including risk mapping, where they evaluate the vulnerabilities of particular areas where diseases that affect the cocoa crop are prevalent. This information guides the CRC in their crop breeding initiatives where they graft species of the crop that are resistant to diseases present in certain areas.

“We would have done a lot of research to optimise cocoa farming, make it more efficient and to help mitigate some of the risks associated with it.

“The whole idea is to have a climate-smart approach and a more resilient cocoa value chain…we also want to look at how we support cocoa-related enterprises … we work with our stakeholders, we have exporTT under the Trade and Industry Ministry.

Deborah Hoyte, export advisor at exporTT under the TT Trade and Investment Agency said the agency works with cocoa farmers, helping them in many aspects to enhance their export capabilities.

“There are a lot of people who are close to being export ready and we want them to interface with these governmental export agencies.”

“We’ve been working with the CRC for the past ten years to make sure that the cocoa farmers get the training, the research and the funding they need to move them from simply being producers and manufacturers to actually being successful exporters. That’s why we’re here because there are always new producers and manufacturers coming up.

“So we try to build those relationships so we can work with them to find export market and help them with their entry requirements, their export strategies and other things to ensure their success in the international market.”