From January 1, 2016, its chocolate confectionery and biscuit range, including brands such as KitKat, Aero and Smarties, will use cocoa from the Nestlé Cocoa Plan.
The Nestlé Cocoa Plan is the company’s own sustainable sourcing program that also uses third party certification through UTZ Certified and Fairtrade.
The Cocoa Plan covers around half of Nestlé’s cocoa supply in Côte D’Ivoire and 25% overall, the company told this site earlier this year.
Nestlé has committed to sourcing 150,000 metric tons of cocoa through its Cocoa Plan by 2017. This would represent around 35% of its cocoa supply against estimates in the 2015 Cocoa Barometer that put Nestlé’s global cocoa supply at 430,000 MT in 2013. The company has made no public commitment to scale up to 100% by a set deadline.
Mars, Hershey and Ferrero have made commitments to move to 100% certified cocoa by 2020. Mondelēz International is scaling up its own Cocoa Life program, which has uses certification, but like Nestlé has made no pledge to move to 100% by a particular date.