Bay of Plenty Times
  • Bay of Plenty Times home
  • Latest news
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Sport
  • Video
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Residential property listings
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
  • Sport

Locations

  • Coromandel & Hauraki
  • Katikati
  • Tauranga
  • Mount Maunganui
  • Pāpāmoa
  • Te Puke
  • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • Thames
  • Tauranga
  • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Bay of Plenty Times

C-Corp brings cacao to chocolate makers

By David Porter
Bay of Plenty Times·
22 Jan, 2014 03:00 AM3 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

TAURANGA FACILITY: C-Corp NZ general manager Glen Yeatman with a slab of cocoa mass ready for chocolate making.PHOTO/C-CORP

TAURANGA FACILITY: C-Corp NZ general manager Glen Yeatman with a slab of cocoa mass ready for chocolate making.PHOTO/C-CORP

Mount Maunganui-based C-Corp NZ is beginning to taste success in its goal of making and selling cocoa products to New Zealand chocolate manufacturers and catering industry consumers, says general manager Glen Yeatman.

The company, which sources its cacao (cocoa) beans from the Solomon Islands, recently made a sale to Prolife Foods, which owns Donovans Chocolates and Mother Earth foods.

C-Corp's key outputs are the cocoa nibs (the crushed and winnowed beans) and cocoa mass, which is made from liquidised nibs, which are solidified into a slab including cocoa butter, to become an ingredient for high-quality chocolate.

The Prolife Foods order included 200kg of cocoa nibs for Mother Earth products. "They've also ordered a 15kg block of cocoa mass to experiment with, because it's a fresh, new taste for them," said Yeatman.

The company also recently sent its first order of 210kg of vanilla-flavoured cocoa mass to a Japanese confectionery maker.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Yeatman got into chocolate making in an unusual way. He made his first batch in his kitchen in the Solomon Islands' capital Honiara, to prove to his boss that the country's cacao crop could be used for gourmet quality chocolates.

"I used my wife's hair dryer as a liquidiser and I was in big trouble with her," he said.

But Yeatman, a Zimbabwean with a long history in coffee growing before he moved to manage cacao plantations in the Solomon Islands, convinced his boss. Clive Carroll, managing director of C-Corp, agreed to invest in a joint venture with Yeatman setting up a C-Corp operation in Tauranga last year. C-Corp also has operations in Australia and Vanuatu.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"I had a family here and the port was a big attraction. We can ship from Honiara to Tauranga in seven days," said Yeatman, who is C-Corp NZ's general manager.

The Tauranga manufacturing facility meets domestic and international food-grade manufacturing requirements and allows for modular expansion of production capability.

When announcing the launch last year, Carroll said the Tauranga facility would give Solomon Islands cocoa a specific origin identity, which it had never enjoyed before.

"We are hopeful to move from being a producer of intermediate product to a producer of 100 per cent Solomon origin chocolate bars sometime during 2014. However, in the meantime it's very much a step-by-step process."

"We control the growing and the grading," said Yeatman. "We believe there is a market here.

"We're hoping that people will see the value of chocolate that hasn't been blended in another country, but is freshly made in New Zealand."

There are some smaller, domestic chocolate makers, which tend to use the equivalent of cooking chocolate as the base ingredient, while the bigger manufacturers use cocoa mass and butter, said Yeatman.

"We are sending out a lot of samples to people and encouraging them to experiment with it."

C-Corp has also ordered a conching/refining machine, which will allow it to also make a wholesale grade of chocolate that can be sold to small and larger manufacturers.

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Bay of Plenty Times

Bay of Plenty Times

'Sustained period of cruelty': Starship doctor slates child protection agency failings

Bay of Plenty Times

Eastern BoP mayors unite against council amalgamation

Bay of Plenty Times

'Mind-blowing': Chef's two-ingredient meringue breakthrough


Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Bay of Plenty Times

'Sustained period of cruelty': Starship doctor slates child protection agency failings
Bay of Plenty Times

'Sustained period of cruelty': Starship doctor slates child protection agency failings

An almost identical case occurred two months after Malachi's death, the doctor said.

16 Jul 05:15 AM
Eastern BoP mayors unite against council amalgamation
Bay of Plenty Times

Eastern BoP mayors unite against council amalgamation

15 Jul 10:57 PM
'Mind-blowing': Chef's two-ingredient meringue breakthrough
Bay of Plenty Times

'Mind-blowing': Chef's two-ingredient meringue breakthrough

15 Jul 09:44 PM


Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

06 Jul 09:47 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Bay of Plenty Times e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Bay of Plenty Times
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP