Voyage Foods' Cocoa-Free Chocolate recognized as more sustainable than traditional chocolate

The assessment was validated by an independent third party.

courtesy of: Voyage Foods

Voyage Foods, the Bay Area food innovation company that combines technology and upcycled ingredients to secure the future of consumers' favorite foods, has released a comprehensive life cycle assessment on the food tech start-up’s clean-label, plant-based cocoa-free chocolate. After raising an additional $22 million last week, the company’s funding is now at $64 million with some of the top VCs in food including Valor Equity Partners, Horizons Ventures, UBS O’Connor, Level One Fund, and more.

According to an independent, third-party validated report from Sphera, Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free “milk” and semi-sweet chocolate are the most sustainable chocolates ever to come to market—moreover, at a price point that enables accessible sustainability for all. Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free “milk” chocolate (which is entirely dairy-free) was compared to traditional milk chocolate, showcasing results across both traditional and plant-based chocolate markets.

Using Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free chocolate rather than traditional chocolate significantly reduces the environmental impact of blue water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and the effects of harmful land use.

Compared to traditional chocolate, Voyage Foods cocoa-free chocolate:

Requires 99% less blue water equating to 67 times less blue water consumption
Generates up to 84% less greenhouse gas emissions
Produces up to 88% fewer emissions from land use change, a major cause of deforestation in cocoa-bean chocolate production regions

“At Voyage Foods, we are focused on addressing the environmentally harmful aspects of the chocolate industry and creating more sustainable, scalable, delicious counterparts. Whether you’re looking at water use, land use, greenhouse gas emissions, or deforestation, it’s clear that the production of traditional chocolate is problematic—and our cocoa-free chocolate is a much-needed solution,” replied CEO and co-founder Adam Maxwell. “We’re proposing that food companies can make more sustainable and ethically sourced products at a cost that on the industrial side is significantly less than current alternatives.”

Working towards a future where competitively priced production and sustainable planetary health can (and must) co-exist, Voyage Foods’ mission is to activate industry-wide change by partnering exclusively with B2B customers and bring cocoa-free chocolate to their portfolios. Since its inception three years ago, Voyage Foods has commercialized and scaled their operation with offerings in “milk”, semi-sweet, and dark cocoa-free chocolate, offering a 1:1 substitute to conventional chocolate in both flavor and texture while empowering manufacturers to bypass the chocolate industry’s unsustainable environmental issues and vulnerability to costly and unpredictable supply chain instability.

Additionally, Voyage Foods provides industry manufacturers with supply chain and price stability that provide significantly better margins. In 2023 alone, bulk cocoa rose to its highest price in the past 50 years, and there was a worldwide 150 million pound cocoa shortage. By using upcycled ingredients that are less expensive to source, widely available, and readily scalable, Voyage avoids at-risk commodity ingredients that are vulnerable to price fluctuations. Consequently, their CPG partners can integrate Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free chocolate into their products and provide their customers with a delicious, environmentally beneficial experience at fair and stable pricing.

Voyage Foods life cycle assessment (LCA) considered the environmental impacts of cocoa-free “milk” and semi-sweet chocolate versus those of conventional chocolate across every impact category studied in the report: blue water consumption and emissions from greenhouse gasses and land use change.

Sphera, the ESG consulting firm, validated the data and LCA model, meeting the requirements for LCA studies set by International Organization of Standardization (ISO), considered the gold standard in environmental assessments.

For more information, click here to read the summary of Voyage Foods Cocoa-Free Chocolate LCA.

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Liz Parker Kuhn is the senior editor of Candy Industry and Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery, and has worked at BNP Media since 2012. She has written for CBS Detroit as well as for her own blogs. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. Liz can be contacted at (248) 839-7156 or at parkere@bnpmedia.com.