Nestlé UK brands including KitKat, Quality Street and Munchies are now using cocoa ingredients sourced from Nestlé-screened cocoa farming families.
The ingredients in the chocolate brands, which also include Aero, After Eight, Yorkie and Rolo, have been sourced from cocoa farming families that are part of Nestlé’s Income Accelerator Programme.
The programme, created in 2022, was devised to close the living income gap of cocoa-farming families and reduce child labour risk.
After an initial test with 10,000 families, 2024 marks the first year of a scale up phase, with 30,000 families now enrolled in the programme across Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.
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By 2030, the programme aims to reach an estimated 160,000 cocoa-farming families in the brand’s cocoa supply chain to create impact at scale.
The programme incentivises and supports cocoa-farming families to enrol their children in school, implement good agricultural practices, engage in agroforestry activities, and diversify their incomes.
Nestlé has collaborated with several expert partners and suppliers to transform its global cocoa sourcing and achieve full traceability and physical segregation of the cocoa sourced from its income accelerator programme.
This allows the confectionery giant to track the entire journey of cocoa beans from groups of farms to factory, while keeping them physically separated from other cocoa sources.
Earlier this year, it was revealed Nestlé was investing in the Ocean 14 Capital Fund I, which focuses on delivering a sustainable and regenerative “blue economy,” as it looks to drive its path to net zero.
