The environmental impact of growing, processing and transporting the chocolate is said to be minimal, but the retail price for the food billed to taste of fruit, tobacco and grass is eye-watering. A 85g bar of Gru Grococo will sell at an introductory price of £11.95, but if bought while still at sea will cost £60 for six bars – the equivalent of around £1.50 a mouthful.
“It may well be the most expensive chocolate in Britain,” says Chantal Coady of Rococo chocolate who will sell it online. “But we think it is the only truly carbon-neutral chocolate. People are not paying anywhere near the real environmental price for chocolate when they buy an ordinary bar. This is chocolate without an impact. Plus, for every bar we make, we are returning 60-70% of the retail price cost to the growers, compared to next to nothing with conventional chocolate. All the value added with this cocoa is in Grenada.”
Industry and government research suggests that shipping by conventional sea or air transport is only a very small part of food’s overall environmental impact. But Fairtransport, the Dutch company which owns the Tres Hombres ship, argues that the only truly sustainable way to carry food from the tropics is by sail.
The Tres Hombres, which can take 30 tonnes of goods a time, crosses the Atlantic several times a year. In two years it has shipped aid to Haiti and elsewhere, as well as rum and fruit.
“This is only a beginning. The next step is to build a much larger sail-powered cargo ship, a 3,000 tonne EcoLiner equipped for container traffic and fully competitive with the oil guzzling competitors”, says Fairtransport director Jorne Langelaan. “We want to re-establish sailing ships as a natural alternative to an anti-ecological culture. We want to see a revival of the great age of sail, as a means of Fair transport for cargo around the Atlantic”.
