Mangaluru: A revolutionary dark chocolate was introduced on Wednesday by The Campco Limited, a local arecanut based company which also manufactures chocolates. The chocolate has active flavanoids which are a bunch of powerful antioxidants.
“The productivity and sustainability of cocoa is declining in the world due to pest diseases of the crop and the climate too. By 2050, the population of the country is expected to hit the mark of 9 billion, and the cocoa market is growing at the rate of 10-15 percent every year which calls for a heavy increase in productivity of cocoa plants,” said Dr. Chowdappa the Director of Central Plantation and Crop Research Institute (CPCRI).
“In India, cocoa can be grown not only as a field crop, but also as a mixed crop like some of the other countries do. If India can tap into the cocoa growers completely, our country can be a top grower of cocoa due to it’s demand, yield and ease of growing. Indian cocoa is as good as Ghana cocoa,” he added.
When introducing Campco’s brand of dark chocolate Dr. Chowdappa said, “This particular dark chocolate ‘Dark Tan’, contains a lot of cocoa powder, but not it’s butter. This recipe helps in keeping the chocolate for longer in room temperature. The main focus of this chocolate is also to reach the rural areas where there is no need for a fridge to store it”.
P Janardhan, Senior Manager of Quality and Assurance, Campco said that there are no chemicals or pesticides in the cocoa used by Campco. “Our office in Puttur has a very systematic way of going about various quality tests which makes sure that there are no faults in the chocolate,” he said.
Campco is now focusing on marketing the dark chocolate to rural areas as it is affordable to the general public and the fact that dark chocolate is healthy and doesn’t melt at higher temperatures.
