Milka brand joins Mondelēz International’s sustainability scheme

Mondelēz International has confirmed its Milka chocolate brand will join the company’s cocoa sourcing programme, as part of an ongoing target of sourcing all of its cocoa sustainably.

The chocolate tablets across Europe will feature a new packaging design displaying its Cocoa Life initiative logo starting this August, which it hopes will boost its major project to assist 200,000 farmers and one million people by 2020.

By the end of 2019, the company expects to have the entire Milka chocolate portfolio in Europe join the programme. Milka follows other Mondelēz International brands that are sustainably sourced through the Cocoa Life programme, including Cadbury Dairy Milk in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland, Côte d’Or in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, Freia and Marabou in the Nordics and Oreo cookies across Europe.

“We’re extremely proud to see Milka, our largest chocolate brand in Europe, join Cocoa Life,” said Hubert Weber, executive vice president and president, Mondelēz Europe.

“We’re seeing great success with the programme and, with this move, we’re taking another big step toward our goal of reaching 200,000 farmers and one million people by 2022,” added the senior executive, who said the brand strived to use quality ingredients, including no artificial flavours, colours or preservatives are used in the range.

As the company explained, Cocoa Life’s mission is to create a strong cocoa supply chain while transforming lives and livelihoods, addressing deforestation and building resilience to climate change across six cocoa origin countries.

These include Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, India and Brazil. By the end of 2017, the programme reached 120,500 farmers in 1,085 communities, and distributed more than one million shade trees as part of a global effort on climate change. Through Cocoa Life, the company also increased its sourcing of sustainable cocoa to 35%, up 14% from 2016.

Independent verification has shown that in Indonesia’s Cocoa Life communities, farmers’ annual income increased 37%, and cocoa yield by a margin of 10%.

“As one of the world’s largest chocolate manufacturers, we reach millions of consumers with brands such as Milka,” said Weber.

“We want to use this scale to drive positive change for the communities on which we depend, and to work with farmers so we can continue to build strong relationships for the long term. Now more than ever, our consumers care about their food and want to know that what they’re eating is sustainable.”

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