Mount Maunganui-based C-Corp NZ has launched its first retail product and plans to launch its own line of pure slab chocolate later this year, says general manager Glen Yeatman.
It's been a long journey for the company, which was set up in early 2013.
"My passion is to make chocolate like it used to be," said Mr Yeatman. "Our goal is to become a producer of our own brand."
C-Corp NZ's key outputs are the cacao (cocoa) nibs - the roasted, crushed and winnowed beans - and cocoa mass, which is made from liquidised nibs, which are then solidified into a slab including cocoa butter.
The beans are all sourced from the Solomon Islands, where Mr Yeatman used to manage cacao plantations before moving to New Zealand to start C-Corp NZ with the backing of C-Corp owner and managing director Clive Carroll.
C-Corp NZ originally planned to sell its cocoa mass to local chocolate manufacturers and has had some success with that. But it realised there was little point in trying to compete with major volume suppliers of generic chocolate with its single-origin chocolate.
"We don't want to compete with the big companies," said Mr Yeatman. "We want to be known as a single-origin, high quality producer of chocolate. It's more beneficial for us longer term to develop our own chocolate, than to undersell what we produce."
However, the first of C-Corp's products to find a retail market has been the single-origin cacao nibs, which are sold as a baking, smoothie and cereal additive and healthy snack - the nibs contain no sugars. So far the nibs have been launched in the SimpliFood franchise and in Tauranga's Gluten Free shop, and Mr Yeatman plans to expand from there.
Tony Kelly, co-founder of the SimpliFood franchise, who also runs the Tauranga shop, said: "Our philosophy is to support local and New Zealand businesses as much as we can.
"C-Corp's cacao nibs are a very good product."
Mr Kelly said customers were using the nibs because they wanted a more natural product than generic cocoas that contained sweeteners.
For its chocolate, C-Corp plans to keep it simple, with dark and milk chocolates. The company is also working on a dairy-free, sugar-free product.
Tauranga food writer and chef Peter Blakeway said that when he did taste-testings with C-Corp's chocolate with clients at cook schools, it blew them away because it was so different from the generic product they were used to.
"The nibs are his first product on the market, but the chocolate is amazing," he said. "It's a unique taste."