Turning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate has netted Munich-based B2B meals tech startup Planet A Foods (previously QOA) a $30 million Series B funding spherical. Now, the Y Combinator alum is gearing up for industrialization, with the funds set to be deployed to scale its manufacturing capability by round 7.5x. The spherical quick follows a $15.four million Series A again in February.
Currently, the startup is producing 2,000 tons of ChoViva, because it calls its cocoa-free, decrease carbon chocolate various, per yr. It plans to step that as much as over 15,000 tons because it provides capability and kicks off worldwide growth exterior an preliminary trio of European markets.
Opening its first U.S.-based manufacturing facility is on the playing cards. Building on the three native markets (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) the place its chocolate substitute is already in meals merchandise that purpose to tempt sweet-toothed customers, it is usually eyeing launches into the U.Ok. and France throughout the first quarter of 2025. Brands shopping for into ChoViva up to now embrace Lambertz, Lindt, Rewe Group, and even the German practice operator, Deutsche Bahn, which probably pops a number of chocolate treats on clients’ tea trays each day.
So far, the startup has round 20 clients for its alt chocolate elements, principally main European meals producers but in addition some U.S. manufacturers. As it grows capability, it’ll be aiming so as to add extra strategic companions too.
Cocoa, not so candy
The drawback Planet A Foods is tackling is making a staple candy deal with (chocolate) much less of an environmental horror. Traditional cocoa-based chocolate manufacturing raises severe sustainability points, because the crop grows in areas with rainforest, which could be lower right down to make manner for cocoa bean plantations. Global demand can be outstripping an more and more fragile (and ethically fraught) provide, resulting in inflated prices and fears for the way forward for the cocoa bean in a quickly warming world.
Supplying the meals business with an alternate chocolate-esque ingredient that — similar to the actual deal — could be baked into or folded onto snack merchandise like breakfast cereals, confectionary, and desserts is Planet A’s mission. And it’s not a trivial objective: The startup reckons an annual toll of some 500 million tons of CO2 could possibly be averted by switching bulk chocolate manufacturing away from cocoa beans to its extra sustainable technique that avoids deforestation and localizes elements sourcing.
The elements it makes use of to supply ChoViva have been chosen partially as they are often grown regionally (oats are one other of its staples) — therefore it claims a carbon footprint that’s as much as 80% decrease than typical chocolate (however observe that increased certain is for the vegan model of ChoViva which, in contrast to different blends, doesn’t include any milk merchandise).
“We’re not against chocolate,” stresses co-founder and CEO Dr. Maximilian Marquart, one half of the brother-sister founder group behind Planet A Foods. CTO Dr. Sara Marquart is the meals scientist who developed the method for making the cocoa-free chocolate. “That’s very important. So we’re not taking away your [premium] chocolate. We’re after all the snacking applications — [confectionary such as] M&Ms, Snickers, Mars, Bounty, you know, all that stuff.”
Premium chocolate is a tiny market in comparison with the majority enterprise of mass market confectionary that Planet A Foods is concentrating on. And on this area, the place environmental degradation happens at horrible scale, the standard of the chocolate that’s used is mostly decrease, actually because it’s decrease in precise cocoa-content — therefore [Maximilian] Marquart argues there’s no distinction between how ChoViva tastes, and the stuff customers are routinely being offered in mass market merchandise. “It’s indistinguishable,” he suggests.
“My sister Sara . . . discovered that truly 80% of the everyday chocolate flavors come from the processing of the cocoa beans and never from the beans itself — so ….
