Overcoming the Cocoa Crisis With Fermentation of Waste
Is there a scalable solution for the cocoa crisis that’s natural and low-cost?
Written by Jose Manuel Salvador Lopez
EDITED by ARIYANA RAYATT
The spot for the most popular flavour in the world goes to vanilla, but not far behind is chocolate. From your croissants to your pralines, to your easter egg, cocoa products have dominated shop shelves, moving around 18 billion pounds in the global market in 2025.
While the cacao tree originated in tropical areas of the Americas, nowadays, most cacao trees are cultivated in Africa, particularly in the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Together the two countries produce half of the world’s cocoa.
The chocolate on our shelves comes from the seeds of the cacao tree. Cacao trees produce characteristic and colourful pods filled with seeds surrounded by white pulp. These seeds are dried and left to ferment for five to seven days, after which they are roasted, the shells are removed, and the nibs left are ground to produce chocolate liquor. The chocolate liquor, also known as cocoa paste or mass, contains a mix of fats (cocoa butter), proteins and flavours. Pressing the chocolate liquor separates the cocoa butter from the rest, which is called cocoa solids. When the solids are powdered, we know the ingredient is cocoa powder, which is the very same as the one in our baking cupboards and chocolate products.
Cocoalypse: Unsustainability in the Cocoa Industry
For a long time, the world price of cocoa powder oscillated between £1,500 and £2,300 per tonne, but this changed in 2024 when a series of factors led to bad crops and prices surged to almost £7,800. That’s over a 300% increase in price in just one year.
The main culprit for this surge is climate change. Longer periods above 32°C, changes in rain patterns and an increase in dry soil, all impacted cacao bean growth. On top of this, a fungus – black pod fungus – causing the rotting of the cocoa pod has spread through plantations, causing reduced yields for farmers. If these two problems weren’t enough, mealybug infestations, smuggling of cocoa out of Ghana to be sold for higher prices; local contamination from illegal gold mining; and even market speculators like Pierre Andurand, betting against cocoa, have made their contribution to the soaring prices.
Initially, the impact of the cocoa crisis was not necessarily felt in the supermarkets, with it being put down to a “bad year”. However, entering 2025 has shown that this crisis might be here to stay. Climate-related problems are getting worse with time, and the plantations and cocoa trees are getting older, making them weaker against new infections. For example, the cacao swollen shoot virus has been aggressively attacking crops in 2025 and is expected to reduce yields by 50% for two years after the first infections. Given the situation, the chocolate market has no choice but to accept these new steep prices, and this will be felt in the pockets of chocolate lovers.
Reducing Cocoa Needs Without Total Substitution
Andy Clayton, CEO of FermTech, sees the cocoa crisis as a canary in the coal mine – an example of the threat climate change poses to food systems. Since we can’t rely on governments doing enough to stop the climate crisis, it is necessary to innovate and set up resilient food production processes. While there are many options for sustainable alternatives to current food systems, such as insects, consumers are reluctant to compromise. Food and gastronomy carry important cultural influences and meanings, so, whenever possible, industries prefer to find substitutes rather than new food products.
If we look at the particular case of chocolate, there are companies like PlanetAFoods in Germany or WNWN in the UK that are aiming to make chocolate without cocoa. While these products offer a sustainable alternative, their flavour or properties might not convince some consumers. But perhaps total substitution isn’t necessary.
Clayton and his team believe there is another way to tackle the cocoa crisis – reducing the amount of cocoa and elevating its taste with flavour enhancers. Flavour enhancers are ingredients that magnify natural flavours or improve the sensory experience. Some commonly known flavour enhancers are salt, vinegar and monosodium glutamate.
FermTech has developed its own flavour enhancer – Koji Cocoa – for chocolate-related products using fermentation technology. Koji Cocoa allows for up to 50% reduction of cocoa powder compared to traditional confectionery, without compromising flavour. With a similar colour and texture to cocoa powder, it can be used beyond solid chocolate reaching into chocolate baked goods, muffins, brownies, cookies and so on.
Kōji, Fermentation and Cocoa
Clayton and his company are part of a revolution in food production. He stresses that the problem with food innovation is that our food production systems have been evolving for thousands of years, creating a diversity that will be difficult to change with just a few technologies. Instead, a constellation of smaller innovations is sprouting, aspiring to solve similar issues. However, there are challenges in the development of these innovations, some of which are solved by fermentation products such as Koji Cocoa.
As Clayton puts it: “We’re all trying to solve the same problems using technology to change how we make food. I think there needs to be matching around two areas. One area is that we need low-tech, low-cost solutions for low-cost products. And the second is that we need more natural solutions for high-value products.” Clayton went on to explain that high-technology solutions are often associated more with low-value products (e.g. ultra-processed foods, such as industrial baked goods or sodas) contrary to artisanal or natural processes. This paradoxically means that the high-cost technologies prevent the product from reaching low prices to make the product commercially viable. “The advantage of solid-state fermentation is that it is scalable, natural, and low-cost, so it leapfrogs some of those challenges”.
Solid-state fermentation is a food-production process that uses mould and has been used in East Asia for thousands of years. One version of this process uses Kōji, a Japanese term for the use of moulds in different fermented foods. For example, soy sauce or miso is produced when Kōji is grown on soybeans, and sake is produced from rice inoculated by Kōji. In the same way that not any yeast species can be used for beer brewing, not any mould species can be used in Kōji. Only species belonging to the genus Aspergillus are used in Kōji, and even then not all of them are suitable, with some Aspergillus moulds producing toxins called aflatoxins. In this traditional Asian technique, mould is grown on a substrate, changing its chemical properties, and producing new flavours and characteristics.
Koji Cocoa is an heir of this ancient food-production technology using mould and fermentation to enhance flavours. However, Clayton and FermTech take a step towards sustainability by using side streams, specifically spent grains from brewing waste, as the substrate for the mould to cultivate. The simple idea of mould growing on waste is not easy to translate to an industrial scale.
One of the technical challenges that Clayton highlighted was preventing the substrate (the grains) from being contaminated with any other organism than the Kōji mould. FermTech deals with this by running sterile systems. However, translating these processes to a scale that can deliver the necessary quantities needed for their clients is the most pressing current challenge for FermTech. The Fermtech team are aiming to leverage the existing and established large-scale systems of Kōji-based fermentation in Asia, by adapting the processes for the production of Koji Cocoa.
The secret sauce that makes Koji Cocoa a flavour enhancer for cocoa comes in the process called “downstream processing”. While the mould grows on the substrate, it will produce a variety of compounds, with different colours, smells, and other properties. By processing the final fermentation product in different ways, FermTech can engineer and design the composition of the final product. For example, they have been able to perfect these parameters in two ways to give them two products. One – Koji Cocoa – with the properties to best enhance cocoa powder and another, – Koji Flour – a flavour and nutrition enhancer for savoury baked goods, such as bread sticks and dumplings.
Benefits Beyond Sustainability
Koji Cocoa is not just a flavour enhancer, but a nutrition and sustainability enhancer. By using waste as substrate and efficient fermentation techniques, Clayton has managed to set up a process that FermTech claims has a 98% less carbon impact than traditional cocoa production. Beyond carbon reduction, Koji Cocoa also offers the confectionary market an opportunity to reduce their cocoa costs without compromising on flavour while also offering a potential sustainable edge over competitors
Clayton pointed out that food products produced through fermentation are not known by the general public because of their sustainable potential, but instead for their health benefits. The public associates fermentation with nutritional benefits, like those seen in products like yoghurt or sauerkraut. This plays in favour of Clayton’s product, as their fermented products also provide valuable nutritional qualities. For example, Koji Cocoa has the potential to increase the nutritional properties of cocoa products, such as supplementing the protein content, improving digestibility, and increasing antioxidant capacity. When looking toward the future, Clayton spoke about a potential enrichment of their Koji products with functional proteins (those that provide certain features to the food product, such as casein or gelatin) that would have specific health benefits, although this will require further research.
For the moment, FermTech is aiming to get Koji Cocoa into as many products as possible, providing economical, sustainable and health benefits all at the same time. Clayton has a positive outlook on the future of food innovation while recognising that there are still hurdles to overcome: “We are at an early research and development stage facing implementation and adoption challenges, but it is very fascinating to see how it all plays out”. It is said that crises are opportunities in disguise, and for FermTech the cocoa crisis might be an opportunity to make this industry more sustainable through fermentation.
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