It’s good to produce chocolate from our own cocoa: Firm boss

THE Queen Emma Chocolate is the first value added product for a commodity in which the final product is normally imported into the country.
Queen Emma Chocolate Company (QECC) general manager Karina Makori said about 10,000 bars of chocolate were produced every day at its factory in Port Moresby.
“PNG produces a lot of cocoa, I think last year, 40,000 tons of cocoa was produced and a lot of that was exported,” she said.
“It is great that we can have a value-added product, that consumers can say that this is from our PNG cocoa, and something that can go with the other PNG-made products such as coffee and tea.
“It is wonderful to be sourcing cocoa from over 2,000 independent family farmers across PNG.”
Makori, who has worked with the Paradise Company Ltd, the parent company for 16 years and now three years with QECC, said the factory had 20 employees.
“It includes the engineers, cleaners and production engineers.
“It is a fun place to work at and we have got very tired of eating chocolate so we do not like chocolate anymore,” Makori quipped to The National on Friday during a tour of what is the first chocolate factory in the country.
She said the staff work on specific Queen Emma Chocolate flavours like Queen Emma Milk, Dark and White on a full day.
“On the production schedule, we will either do scheduled dark chocolate or milk chocolate,” Makori said.
“It is better for us to stick to one variant in a day, or maybe in a whole week, we might be doing dark chocolate for the whole week, or we could do dark chocolate for three days straight before switching to another flavour,” she said.
Makori also encouraged Papua New Guineans to buy the dark chocolate as it was the healthier option.
“The Queen Emma Milk is more favoured because it is sweeter, Papua New Guineans like sweet things, but we are really encouraging consumers to buy the dark as well as a healthier option, because it has less sugar.”
Paradise Company Ltd chairman Anthony Smare said the company was on track in building a world class diversified food company.
“We have identified the five main strategic growth drivers of the entire business and structured the operating companies to best achieve this, along with identifying new market segments we can enter using our combined strength.
“The existing categories of biscuits, cooking oil, ice cream, snacks, and bottled water have plenty of space for growth, our chocolate factory is showing growth.”