Dutch-founded impact brand Tony’s Chocolonely has just scored a significant industry sustainability win, as global agri-business, Cargill, becomes the latest to embrace its ‘Mission ally’ venture.

The initiative, which has now been running for the past few years, themed around greater cocoa industry sustainability of sourcing, 100% traceability of beans, paying farmers more, and professionalising agricultural sectors further, which has been a commendable venture.

While its own statistics have shown that there has been as broad buy-in from co-operatives that it deals with, by the company’s own acknowledgement, there’s still a significant amount of work to be done, as instances of child labour continue to be found in its supply chains – along with those relating to the wider industry.

But the latest news this week that Cargill is becoming one of its mission allies for its Open Chain, is indeed a big deal – being one of the largest agricultural groups in the world, which has noted that many of Tony’s Chocolonely’s aspirations are in fact closely aligned with its own sustainability goals.

While Cargill has had its Cocoa Life initiative for well over a decade that has sought to drive down levels of deforestation, child labour and also supporting farming communities, the specific principles being advocated by Tony’s have certainly caught the attention of a growing list of partners to its international operations.

Among those confirmed as being part of the scheme are Albert Heijn, Aldi, Ben & Jerry’s, Huel, Dutch retailer Hema, and UK supermarket chain Waitrose, forming a cluster of more than two dozen businesses and organisations that have bought into the philosophy.

While Tony’s Chocolonely has itself found itself in the spotlight in recent years over just how successful it is actually being in terms of that founding core mission of delivering a ‘slave free’, or ‘exploitation free’ as it prefers to term it latterly, cocoa supply chain, but there can be little doubting its sincerity.

The business was set up to challenge the status quo of the cocoa and chocolate sector, which had well over two decades ago pledged to curb the worst excesses of the industry in terms of its environmental impact, and lack of social protections to prevent child and forced labour. This led to the “Harkin- Engel protocol” which laid down the ground rules for eradicating these major issues – sadly over two decades on, those problems still persist.

While some progress may have been made, global events, geopolitical challenges and environmental issues have combined to create the perfect storm for a sector that remains in crisis – however some within the industry would like to turn the spotlight off the realities for the sector now.

Perhaps the major problem relating to that much-lauded protocol for the sector was the fact that it essentially remained a voluntary initiative – history has shown us that self regulation of any industry rarely works, however much we would like that to be the case. There are clearly a number of good actors that have proved they take a genuine interest in communities at the heart of the chocolate industry, yet sadly, there are those, without naming names, have in fact seemingly lagged behind in making much-needed progress to relieve the poverty, and social challenges facing countries including Ghana and Ivory Coast that still provide two thirds of the world’s cocoa.

So, when a major business such as Cargill makes a decision to try and raise its game in making such commitments to a project such as Tony’s supply chain venture, it’s a moment to really hope that it can make a difference. Again, only time will tell on that score, but with the advent of the EUDR deforestation frameworks in the EU, and parallel corporate due diligence laws – which may have been disapointingly weakened in the lobbying halls of the European Parliament, yet are still expected to see the light of day, there’s a sense that momentum is finally gathering pace after a long delay on helping those who need it most within our sector’s core supply chains.