WCF is pleased to welcome Waldenbuch, Germany-based chocolate maker Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. as our newest member.
In joining WCF, Tim Hoppe, the company’s project manager for strategic raw materials projects stated, “As a family-owned company in third and fourth generation, social and ecological responsibility combined with long term thinking has always been a fundamental part of our mindset and actions.
In addition, we are convinced that quality and good taste can be best achieved through long term partnerships in the cocoa origins. We appreciate the common efforts of the cocoa industry towards a sustainable cocoa sector and want to share and promote them.”
Ritter Sport has been supporting small Nicaragua farmers to cultivate cocoa in an agroforestry system and supported their organization in cooperatives since 1990.
This long-lasting part of the engagement in Central America is called “Cacao-Nica” and has developed into a significant source of cocoa supply for Ritter Sport.
Three years ago a new chapter in the commitment in Nicaragua was marked when Ritter Sport started – one century after its foundation – its own cocoa plantation, “El Cacao”. The formerly fallow land shall –based on the principles of integrated agriculture – be transformed into a model plantation.
The area of 2500 hectares will be one of the largest cocoa plantations in the world from which one third has already been re-naturized, while two thirds are farmed in an ecologically and socially responsible manner.
Ritter Sport is developing its sustainable cocoa supply chain also in Western Africa through long term partnerships with suppliers and farmer organizations
