Lab-grown chocolate could be supermarket ready by 2027

CHOCOLATE could soon be produced using lab-grown ingredients, including cocoa butter, according to a Mondelez-backed foodtech company.

Celleste Bio, an Israeli startup specialising in “cocoa-tech magic” has successfully grown cocoa butter out of a lab, a key ingredient in the majority of chocolate products on the shelves.

The technology is part of a growing field of foodtech which looks to find cultivated alternatives to cocoa.

The cocoa industry has become increasingly volatile due to climate disruption, ageing cocoa crops and long replanting timelines.

This has impacted the cost of consumer chocolate products, which have increased by 15% over the past year, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

Cells to chocolate

Celleste Bio’s process uses cells from cocoa beans which are fed sugars and nutrients in large tanks to help them grow and produce cocoa butter.

The company says it will “produce more with less”, taking up to two cocoa beans to produce 2 t/y of cocoa butter, compared to the traditional process, which takes roughly 4 t/y of cocoa pods and 10,000 sqm of land to produce the same amount.

A different chocolate

Celleste says it hopes to bring resilience back into the chocolate supply chain with its technology.

Hanne Volpin, the company’s chief technical and scientific officer, said: ”We are on track to produce one tonne of cocoa butter annually in a 1,000-litre bioreactor from a single bean – which would otherwise require about a hectare of cocoa trees.

“To that end, we've curated a very robust bank of multiple cocoa bean varieties we can use to grow, test and scale material without ever having to cut down a single tree in the rainforest.”