History is coming full circle: Borrowed from the Aztecs four centuries ago, perfected for the palate by the Europeans, chocolate is conquering new worlds, with sales booming from Asia to Brazil.
Every second, 95 tonnes of chocolate are wolfed down around the world, or 3 million tonnes a year, according to figures supplied by the annual Salon du Chocolat fair, which started on Wednesday in Paris.
The globalization of chocolate is most striking in Japan, where annual sales are soaring by 25 percent and French chocolatiers are feted like stars while their Japanese counterparts now rank among the world’s best.
“Japan has converted en masse to chocolate in the past decade, with chocolate Salons in seven different cities,” said Francois Jeantet, co-founder of the Paris fair, which has spawned 21 sister events from New York to Shanghai.
For the Salon’s annual fashion show featuring life-sized chocolate dresses, this year’s model is a kimono-inspired number created by French chocolatier Frederic Cassel — who has three stores in Japan.
“We wanted to express Japanese tradition, cherry blossom in the wind,” in the long sleeves with chocolate flowers, said Cassel, who worked to a design by a young fashion student, Audrey Lempeseur.
The 15kg edible dress — a month in the making — will be slipped on just moments before the show, lest it should melt under the spotlights.
Afterwards, it will be shipped straight to Japan.
According to Jacques Pessis, president of the highly serious Chocolate Crunchers’ Club, which each year rewards the best world chocolates, France and Japan are the current masters of the game.
“Thirty years ago Belgian and Swiss chocolate ruled the world. These days French chocolate is known the world over. And more and more Japanese chocolatiers, taking their inspiration from the French, are truly excellent,” he said.
Japan aside, chocolate sales are also growing 30 percent year on year in China, while in India — even though one in two Indians have never tasted chocolate — growth is 20 percent, for a treat taken ultra sweet and milky.
“Nearly every country in the world is now part of the chocolate trade, including Asian countries and their colossal potential markets,” Jeantet and his fellow founder Sylvie Douce said.
Six multinational firms together account for 85 percent of the vast market: Hershey, Mars, Philip Morris, Nestle, Cadbury and Ferrero.
Producer countries like Brazil have turned into major consumers, while others like Vietnam or Indonesia are moving into cocoa growing.
“In Brazil, the market is going through the roof,” the master chocolate maker Stephane Bonnat said. “Production-side, the country has shifted these past six years towards fine, high quality cocoa. On the consumer side, I had sold my whole stock of chocolate bars within half an hour at the first fair in Salvador de Bahia in July.”
Bonnat works with 42 small-scale farms around the world. Like him, many chocolatiers now foster direct ties with cocoa-growers, who also take part in fairs, Douce said.
“Different worlds have come together, and it has helped to vastly improve the quality of both cocoa and chocolate,” she said.
Some 200 chefs from around the world are set to converge on Paris for the 18th edition of the fair, which draws some 100,000 visitors each year.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to