By Carmencita A. Carillo,
Correspondent
DAVAO CITY — In 2014, Jackie and Wilson Go, owners of Fabtech Industrial, Inc., a leading supplier of commercial kitchen solutions, were looking to develop a social enterprise and settled on a chocolate venture.
They set up a factory at Filinvest Industrial Park in Calamba City, Laguna for what is now sold under the brand Auro Chocolates — made with cacao beans from Calinan in Davao City.
“We originally planned to build our factory here in Davao but at that time, the city had power (supply) problems and there was no PEZA (Philippine Economic Zone Authority)-accredited zone here,” Auro Chocolates Davao Manager Louie D. Cena, told BusinessWorld in an interview at the sidelines of the Kakao Konek 2017 conference held in Davao City on Dec. 5-6.
Mr. Cena said despite the distance between the raw material source and the production site, the company is sticking to cacao beans from Davao City because of the quality and the ability of farmers to produce their required volume.
Among the sources of Auro Chocolates are the Subasta Integrated Cooperative in Calinan, Fardecosa Cadalian in Baguio District, and the Paquibato Tree Development Cooperative.
Mr. Cena said the company buys cacao beans only from farmer cooperatives who enter into an exclusive contract.
“If they don’t follow our protocols, especially in post-harvest, then we don’t get their cacao as we only want the best ones,” he said.
Auro Chocolate, which was presented at the Salon du Chocolate in Paris in November as part of the Philippine delegation, boasts of being the “finest” from the country, produced with some of the best machinery from Germany.
“We produce the finest chocolates in the country because we have invested in a steel roller machine… so our chocolates have a smooth texture,” Mr. Cena said.
Auro, with more than 20 employees at its Laguna factory, produces two to three tons of chocolates per day. It considers itself a medium-scale artisanal chocolate company.
Mr. Cena said almost 90% of the output is sold domestically, mainly in shopping malls, but the company is targeting global consumers eventually.
He said domestic processors’ output remains small.
“Since we are a PEZA-located company, our goal is really to export so we find innovative ways for chocolate lovers all over the world,” Auro Marketing Manager Kelly S. Go said during the same interview.
Ms. Go said the company is practicing ‘crowdfarming,’ where consumers can adopt a tree.
The crowdfarming concept gained popularity following a Kickstarter campaign that involved 15 countries in Europe and the United States. Auro is the only non-European producer that participated in the agricultural adaptation of crowdfunding.
“Consumers who adopt a cacao tree… get two kilos of chocolate every year,” she said.
The concept, which was recently launched here, had an initial offering of 1,000 trees at P5,000 per tree. Auro sees this as a sustainable farming model.
Ms. Go said this is the “ultimate Farmville” as investors can have their own virtual farm. Auro has equipped its participating farm with a GPS through which investors can easily check their trees online.
Ms. Go said the company has also formed a partnership with Rolando ‘Serge’ Bueno, a retired Philippine Marine from Calinan, for a movement called “arms to farms,” in which retired marines learn the process of cultivating the Criollo cocoa variety.
Mr. Bueno, now a senior citizen, said he has found a new life as a cacao farmer.
Former soldiers, he said, make for good farmers as military discipline easily applies to growing high-quality cacao.
