ISM & ProSweets 2025: Nukoko unveils fava bean-based milk chocolate alternative amid cocoa deficits
11 Feb 2025 | Nukoko
Kit Tomlinson and Ross Newton, founders of Nukoko, showcased a milk chocolate alternative made from fava beans on the show floor at the Döhler booth. They chose the “incredible legume” for its nitrogen-fixing properties and similarity to cocoa beans. Nukoko follows the same process as traditional cocoa farming, including fermentation, drying, roasting, and grinding.
This is Anvisha for food ingredients first.
I'm here with Kit Tomlinson and Ross Newton, co-founders of New Coco.
Kit Ross, thanks for talking with us today.
What are you presenting on the show floor?
Today at the show we're presenting a milk chocolate alternative made from fava beans.
Why did you choose fava beans as the base for your chocolate alternative?
So fava beans are an incredible lagoon.
They grow in loads of places around the world, from Asia right through to Europe.
Great legume, they're nitrogen fixing, so they really help soil er and most importantly they say share some properties with the cocoa bean that allows us to then take that bean through a similar journey that the cocoa bean goes on to develop similar taste and aroma.
Great.
What can you share about New Cocoa's patented process that allows it to mimic the taste and texture of traditional chocolate?
We can't tell you real detail about the patents, but I suppose what we can say is that it closely follows the cocoa process.
So cocoa in its native kind of farming is fermented, it's dried, it gets roasted and ground.
Down into chocolate and our process is exactly the same and the point is that in cocoa you unlock the same flavor precursors before roasting that bring out the Maillard reaction and that gives us the cocoa flavor profile that we get and we do exactly the same thing with the fava beans.
So we've really taken a very traditional process, inserted fava beans, and used cutting edge technology to produce our product.
Great, thanks for sharing.
There's been a lot of fluctuation in cocoa prices and there's also been a lot of sustainability concerns.
Do you see cocoa-free chocolate as a long-term industry shift or more of a niche innovation?
I think the cocoa industry as a whole has been responsible for huge social and environmental problems.
Even more importantly, climate change is increasingly affecting the ability for cocoa farmers to grow cocoa, so there's a deficit in in the system, and that's led to the huge spikes in commodity prices.
That problem unfortunately is not going to go away, and so we see cocoa alternatives working hand in hand with the cocoa industry to solve these problems.
If you, if you just look at the numbers, right, so at the moment there's a deficit of around 500,000 tons in cocoa beans.
There are 5 million tons of cocoa beans used, you know, each year in, in the whole market.
So already it's, it's a pretty large chunk, and you know they're looking at getting up to about, you know, a million, million ton deficits, you know, in the next couple of years.
So it's like it, it, it's a pretty huge deficit and it's growing, so yeah, look, this is a long term problem.
Interesting.
And how does new cocoa compare nutritionally to conventional chocolate, and what consumer benefits can it offer?
Yeah, I suppose if you look at the back of the pack.
The back of pack nutrition, it's really similar, you know, fava beans have a bit more protein, a bit more fiber, but really it's pretty much like for like compared to cocoa.
The differences are that cocoa has lots of different positive nutritionals like antioxidants, but fava bean has its own antioxidants, packed full of vitamins, folate, antioxidants as , so there's differences, but fava bean is seriously good for you.
Understood.
Can you talk to us about any challenges that you might face or have faced in scaling production, and how does your partnership with Doula help address them?
We're really lucky to have a partnership with an international company like Doula, and yes, there's challenges in all scale up processes, but with Doula hand in hand with us, we are looking forward to being in the market by the end of the year.
How do you think major chocolate brands and consumers are reacting to cocoa-free chocolate, and do you see any resistance or growing demand for these products?
I think the demand is definitely growing.
We speak to all the leading chocolate manufacturers around the world, and they're all looking at live projects for cocoa alternatives.
We're not currently in the market.
We should be launching the second half of this year, but some of our competitors that started earlier than us.
Are in the market and they are, they are hugely successful.
The consumer pick up of them, demand and interest in them is hugely positive, so we think the future is really bright for Cocoa Alternative.
We know that the key in this industry is delivering on taste.
You can deliver on taste, there's products and there's an opportunity in the market.
Great, thanks for your time.
Thank you so much.
