Cocoa-free chocolate maker raises US$52mil
New York: A California startup that’s making cocoa-free chocolate in a bid to sidestep the volatility of commodities markets has raised US$52mil in a funding round.

Voyage Foods’ chocolate is made with blended vegetable oils, sugar, grape seeds and sunflower protein.

It also makes a peanut-free spread with a mix of seeds, sugar, legumes and palm oil and produces a hazelnut-free Nutella-style spread and bean-free coffee.

The company’s founder, Adam Maxwell, sees an opportunity as demand grows for commodities such as coffee beans and cocoa and extreme weather disrupts production, making them scarcer.

Coffee and cocoa alternatives will help to bridge the gap between supply and demand, Maxwell said in an interview, with substitutes becoming “a material percent of these global commodities as the world evolves.”

He added that Voyage products are more environmentally sustainable than the real thing, and said the company aims to sell them to consumer-goods and food-service companies as substitutes for the ingredients. Voyage Foods products arrived at Walmart last year and Maxwell says sales are growing each month.

Rudi’s Rocky Mountain Bakery, a Boulder, Colorado-based maker of gluten-free breads and breakfast sandwiches, is set to launch its own version of JM Smucker’s smash hit Uncrustables sandwiches using Voyage’s peanut-free spread.

The funding round was led by Level One Fund and Horizons Ventures, while SOSV, Nimble Partners and Collaborative Fund also participated.

The company has now raised a total of US$94mil in outside investment. The investment follows a Voyage Foods distribution partnership with agricultural giant Cargill.

Voyage is building a 300,000sq ft facility in the US Midwest as it scales up its business.

Cargill, which is a major player in the cocoa business, says that Voyage “offers more stable pricing and reliance on raw materials that are less subject to market volatility,” according to Anne Mertens-Hoyng, Cargill’s category director of chocolate confectionery and ice cream.

While plant-based meat replacements have yet to win over consumers and cell-based ones are proving expensive and difficult to make, cocoa replacements could have several advantages, said Gil Horsky, founding partner at Flora Ventures and the former head of Mondelez International’s venture capital arm.

Unlike meat, the price of cocoa is getting so high that there’s an opportunity for a replacement to actually cost less, he said. Chocolate is also simpler than meat and easier to mimic, while the idea isn’t to replace chocolate completely but simply to fill the gap between supply and demand, Horsky said.

Flora hasn’t yet invested in a chocolate alternative, but Horsky said he’s hoping to do so soon.

Voyage isn’t the only startup creating substitute chocolate products. Italy-based Foreverland is using carob as a replacement, while London’s WNWN Food Labs sells cocoa-free chocolate bars and Israel’s Celleste Bio is using cell-culture technology to produce cocoa powder and cocoa butter. — Bloomberg
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A California startup that’s making cocoa-free chocolate in a bid to sidestep the volatility of commodities markets has raised US$52mil in a funding round.