Salla Mankinen, CEO and Founder of Orijin, recently participated in a panel discussion at the Amsterdam Sustainable Cocoa Conference, hosted by Chocoa. This event was part of the World Cocoa Foundation Meeting, focusing on the future of sustainable cocoa and the implications of the European Union Due Diligence Regulation (EUDR).

For solutions to comply with the new regulations, Salla Mankinen from solution provider Orijin said one of the main concerns, especially for the small-holder cocoa farmer, is cost. “You can use tools that are freely available or open source, without paying a lot of money. But then the advantage of using a solution provider is that all your data is going to be connected. So when you collect your polygon and the data at farm level, you can then trace it through the chain and validate it with the due diligence statement level.

“So that’s the other advantage of using a solution provider – because especially with these polygons and GPS coordinates that we now have, a lot of companies have them but the quality of them is really low.”

She understood that within the regulations, farms under 4 hectares don’t need polygon mapping, a GPS coordinate should be enough. Mankinen said the risk assessment part of the legislation is “the trickiest bit”, and where there’s the most unknown, still, even from the European Union side, is …” that its seems that they’re not quite clear on what constitutes a sufficient risk assessment.”

Get the full story at Confectionery News – More Cocoa talks in Amsterdam as Chocoa raises the bar for chocolate industry