LCF 2023 “At the London Chocolate Forum, I’d
like to share and entice other chocolate brands to join us in changing the norm in the cocoa industry”
Be the change!
Find out what Joke Aerts, the Lead for Tony’s Chocolonely’s Open Chain, will be covering as a keynote speaker for the London Chocolate Forum 2023
Give us some background on your career and what made you want to work with Tony’s?
I have worked in tropical agriculture supply chains for twenty years. Mostly coffee, tea, tropical fruits, spices, palm oil, and the past 4 years, cocoa. I spent many years on the ground working with smallholder farmers and larger plantations in South Asia and Africa, and I also worked with European companies linking them to more sustainable supply chains. Working for independent NGO certifi cation organisations like Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade, and RSPO was how I could work on infl uencing these supply chains. At Tony’s Chocolonely I am at a private company for the fi rst time, which is a different and interesting sphere of infl uence in getting other companies inspired to act and take responsibility for the inequity in the cocoa supply chain. I was impressed that Tony’s was willing to recognise that cocoa farmers live in systemic poverty and that paying more for cocoa was the fundamental start to addressing the issues we see so frequently in cocoa; child labour and deforestation.
What will you be covering at the London Chocolate Forum? I’ll be talking about Tony’s Open Chain, our industry-led initiative started by Tony’s Chocolonely to collaborate on sustainable cocoa, and yet continue to compete on chocolate. Chocolate companies can work together to maximise our impact and effi ciency in working in west Africa, while collectively giving consumers lots of choice for fair chocolate, and still traditionally competing for choco fans attention to our bars. But we can’t compete on stopping child labour – that is something we should all work hard on. We CAN compete on who makes the tastiest chocolate!.
What made you want to participate at the London Chocolate Forum?
10 Kennedy’s Confection November 2022
Tony’s Open Chain has existed for three years now and we have reached the point where we have some real collective impact to show, both in the market and in West Africa. At the London Chocolate Forum, I’d like to share and entice other chocolate brands to join us in changing the norm in the cocoa industry.
What are you most looking forward to at the event? I am hoping to meet lots of innovative chocolate brands while I am there. Many brands want to build a better supply chain for themselves. We’d like to collaborate with them on that.
What exciting innovations have you seen in the chocolate world so far? An innovation I am proud of is the collaboration between Tony’s Chocolonely and Ben & Jerry’s in Tony’s Open Chain: we are sharing a fully traceable bean with a higher price for farmers for the long-term and putting that bean in their ice cream
and our chocolate bars. Tell us 3 fun facts about yourself.
• Working directly with farmers for years was a great joy for me and came with healthy doses of
adventure. I once slept in Assam, India next to the kitchen where rice was stored and woke to an elephant loudly stripping the window off to get to the tasty treats stored inside. Another time in Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka I was speaking to a farmer when suddenly a lizard fell off the roof on to my head. That shot of adrenaline lasted me a week, I think. • I am a mother of three young kids, and am very popular amongst their friends as there is always copious chocolate at our house. • My next bucket list travel desire is Raja Ampath in Indonesia.
KennedysConfection.com
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