Yorkshire chocolatiers lead the way with exporting success

AN award-winning chocolatier and a specialist manufacturer of a growing range of chocolate bars in flavours such as Eton Mess, Scottish Raspberry, Rhubarb & Custard and English Caramel, are helping to make the UK the ninth biggest exporter of chocolate in the world ahead of Switzerland.

From confectionary to spreads, chocolate is being used in all its forms and exported around the world.

This exporting of products and talent includes Wakefield-based chocolatier David Greenwood-Haigh and East Yorkshire-based Cracking Candy Company.

Mr Greenwood-Haigh, with more than 40 years’ experience in the food industry as a Master Chef member of the Craft Guild of Chefs and sales manager for blue-chip global food businesses including Unilever, established his Coeur de Xocolat business in 2011 to specialise in chocolate events, corporate team-building, consultations and demonstrations in the UK and abroad.

Recent exporting of his talents and expertise saw him host teambuilding events in Dubai for Al Ghurair Foods and in France for Evian and a three-day Chocolate Safari to Bruges, Belgium.

Cracking Candy Company owners Barry Precious, Stephen Winterhalder and his son Chris launched the business in 2014 and having started to export in 2015 now supply their chocolate bars to the Caribbean, Asia and the Gulf.

Following customer feedback, they are adding another four bars to their flavoured range this year with flavours ranging from popping candy to mint and orange.
Mr Precious said: “The world gets smaller every day and it’s therefore important for any brand to have a global strategy. No matter how small the business, you have to think beyond these shores.”

The demand for chocolate products produced in the UK continues – right now, a Peruvian importer is looking for UK suppliers of food products including chocolate, while a Turkish distributor of bakery ingredients is looking for a range of baking ingredients, including cocoa powder.

Susan Waterson, deputy regional director for UK Trade & Investment Yorkshire and the Humber, said: “Right now, UK chocolate products are in demand, all over the world. From Turkey to Peru, the demand is out there.”

Five things you might not know about chocolate:

The top three cocoa bean producing nations are Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Indonesia, according to the Food And Agriculture Organization Of The United Nations

Switzerland, Germany and Ireland consume the most chocolate (according to Forbes), followed by the UK (in terms of weight consumed)

White chocolate isn’t, technically, chocolate as it doesn’t contain cocoa
While the cocoa bean was used in drinks for some time, the history of chocolate as we know it has firm roots in Britain, as it’s widely credited to Bristol-based Joseph Fry, who made mouldable chocolate paste in 1847

The name ‘chocolate’ comes from the term chocolatl, used by the Nahuatl people in Central America and Mexico to refer to the drink made from cocoa