Tony’s Chocolonely opens its supply chain platform to other chocolate makers

Tony’s Open Chain is an initiative to collaborate on sourcing cocoa using Tony’s ‘5 Sourcing Principles’ to tackle illegal child labour and modern slavery by addressing poverty.

The company said the platform has been scaled up to include cocoa butter, enabling all types of chocolate to be produced. A plug-and-play set-up now also allows 'new mission allies' to onboard in just a few months and become sustainability front-runners by the next cocoa season in October 2021, it claimed.

Paul Schoenmakers, Head of Impact at Tony’s Chocolonely, said: “Since the launch of Tony’s Open Chain in 2019, we’ve figured out exactly how to turn our great ideas for sparking change in the chocolate industry into an even greater reality. Now, we’ve made it as easy as possible for all chocolate brands to join Tony’s Open Chain and assume responsibility for human rights and sustainability issues such as deforestation in their cocoa supply chain​.”

He explained Tony’s Open Chain is designed so that all chocolate-making companies can take responsibility for an open and transparent supply chain, where issues are brought out in the open so they can be solved.

The initiative implements an efficient and practical framework for fair sourcing practices following ‘Tony’s 5 Sourcing Principles’: using 100% traceable cocoa beans, paying a higher price, strengthening farmer cooperatives, engaging in long-term direct trading partnerships, and focusing on cocoa quality and productivity to optimize cocoa yields.

“Everything we build in Tony’s Open Chain focuses on making it scalable and replicable, while keeping the model credible. Only together we’ll make chocolate 100% slave-free,” ​he said.​

As part of paving the way for new partners, the company said it has expanded the initiative to also include 100% traceable cocoa butter, the key ingredient in white chocolate.

More beans means more impact

This latest addition means that Tony’s Open Chain is now available for all types of chocolate. Furthermore, sourcing cocoa butter through Tony’s Open Chain means that the bean volume demand has almost tripled in 2020/2021, creating an immediate positive impact with cocoa farmers, because “more beans means more impact​”.

As a result, the platform’s first mission ally, leading Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn, has now completed the goal of transforming its entire Delicata range supply chain.

Tony’s Chocolonely said new partners will be announced in the early months of 2021, to find out more visit tonysopenchain.com.