Enjoying the peanut rock as Charlie in the Chocolate Factory

The association with the illustrious book by Roald Dahl is inevitable, says Hans Neef, CEO of De Chocolate Factory in Heerhugowaard. Among the tens of thousands of peanut rocks and garlands that roll off the assembly line, he feels more like Charlie who deserves a tour with the last golden ticket in his bar than mysterious owner Willie Wonka in his black hat. Cousin has, in fact, been both, since he took over the factory in 2012.

As tempting as it may be, The Chocolate Factory does not show off Sjakie. ‘We have considered it’, says commercial director Bert Baron. ‘But Charlie is the symbol of a fantasy world. Chocolate stands for fun and enjoyment, we are a traditional company. The modern Charlie is in a different factory, he is too far from our brand. We focus on the chocolate maker.’

Rijkenberg, the name of the former family business, is etched in a window of the factory. The recently deceased founder Jos Rijkenberg Sr. had to get used to it, but in 2019 Neef was able to take over De Chocolate Factory as a brand name. And indirectly he also continued a tradition.

Tons of peanuts from Argentina

As a semi-traditional company, De Chocolate Factory operates with about four hundred products at the cutting edge of the chocolate industry, says Neef. The Chocolate Factory distinguishes itself through its specialties in the ‘middle segment’, with the Dutch retail sector, including the large supermarkets, as its main customers. The ‘peanut pride’, as Baron describes it, is the anchor of the company and determines a large part of the turnover. ‘That iconic peanut rock forms our identity.’

The Chocolate Factory gets ‘tons of peanuts’ from Argentina every week. Cousin points to the unusual shapes of the peanut rocks that slide off the belt. They are regularly tasted by a ‘chocolate panel’, even the eating behavior of the consumer has been mapped. Cousin, laughing: ‘You think: that fat peanut rock is for me. And your partner says: I don’t want too many, I’ll take two small ones. In the end you eat the whole bowl together. Chocolate is also emotion.’

Further on, the ‘spraying robot’ does its job by producing rows of crowns, after which the employees refine them with different musket granules and package them – deliberately transparently. Neef: ‘Our customer must be able to see that making chocolate is a craft.’

The Chocolate Factory grew by 30 percent, in July the company joined the NPEX stock exchange and the management issued 3 million euros in preference shares. Too risky in the knowledge that the stock market climate has deteriorated rapidly? Neef: ‘You notice that banks are reluctant, it is almost impossible for an SME to get financing. Now we are trying to acquire capital on our own.’

Every day Neef experiences the tension in the retail sector due to the screeching inflation. The Chocolate Factory also felt compelled to raise prices, as the purchase of liquid chocolate could become 40 percent more expensive by 2023. Neef: ‘It means that I have to work with a higher cost price. Packaging materials have again become 12.5 percent more expensive. The pink musket pellets? 7 percent up because the price of sugar has doubled. Cardboard also went through the roof. Our energy bill is now twice as high. We have to get rid of gas, with this factory we are still in the 19th century. But that change will not be settled tomorrow.’

Supermarkets such as Albert Heijn and Jumbo say they only accept ‘realistic’ price increases. Does Neef also engage in ‘arm-pushing’ with customers? ‘We can substantiate our price increases well, as no SME company can absorb inflation on its own anymore. And the major retailers know this very well. It happens that they say to us: this is too expensive. But we always want to work it out together. If it’s a competition, it’ll stop now.’

Exclude child labour

The chocolate also threatened to become more expensive, because the Swiss producer Barry Callebaut had to temporarily shut down the factory in Wieze in Belgium due to a salmonella outbreak. On Friday, a Callebaut truck delivered liquid chocolate to De Chocolate Factory after almost two months.

As the world’s largest chocolate manufacturer, Callebaut acknowledged in 2021 that its products are not 100 percent free from slave or child labor. Tony’s Chocolonely was subsequently removed from the list of the same name by Slave Free Chocolate because it had cocoa beans processed at Callebaut.

Both concerns intensified their programs in West Africa to exclude child labour. The Chocolate Factory cannot guarantee that the chain is completely ‘slave-free’. Neef: ‘Everything we buy is certified. Our company absolutely does not want to be associated with child labour.’

In 2017 Neef visited various cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast at the invitation of Barry Callebaut. He spoke to chiefs there and saw how complex the problem is for five million poor cocoa farmers who are underpaid. They are trapped in a system in which it is not the producers, but the government that determines the price of the cocoa beans.

pretzels

Neef: ‘The farmers can hardly get by and of course children are still being exploited. They’ve been paid the same for fifteen years, so you know where the money goes. After all, cocoa is an important source of income for those countries.’

Neef observes that African society is looked at too much ‘through a Western lens’. ‘Many initiatives are being taken to develop sustainable programs for the cocoa harvest in countries such as Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Billions of euros have been pumped into this. I fully support them, but it’s a long way. Moreover, the governments in those countries say: we decide for ourselves what is good for us, we don’t need the West for that.’

Chocolate must remain a ‘pure product’, says Neef. For a moment he is Charlie in the Chocolate Factory again, when he describes the latest variant. ‘We are now making a pretzel, crunchy with a salty taste, which you combine with chocolate plus musket grains. If you put that on the table? I don’t think there’s any pretzel left.’