Beyond Good celebrates its first anniversary of operating what it refers to as the newest, most modern chocolate factory in Africa. The company sourced heirloom cocoa from 100 farmers, produced a million chocolate bars, and employed 42 FTEs in its first year of operation at their chocolate factory in Madagascar.
$4M Invested in California Cultured’s Cell-Cultured Chocolate to Solve Deforestation and Child Labor in Cocoa
Agronomics has led a Seed Funding Round for California Cultured, a food-tech company based in Davis, California, which utilises cell culture technology to produce cocoa products like cocoa powder, chocolate, cocoa butter and flavanols in order to circumvent the serious issues arising from cocoa production such as deforestation and child slave labor. California Cultured was founded by cell-culture technology veterans Alan Perlstein and Harrison Yoon, as a way to address the need for more ethical and environmentally friendly methods of chocolate production. The company says, “We select cacao varieties with the best organoleptic properties, take a handful of cells and keep them growing infinitely. We do this by equipping the cells with a proper set of plant nutrients which allows for rapid growth. We harvest …
