“Do I want to double the size of the company? Of course I do,” the CEO of Tony’s Chocolonely, Douglas Lamont, told Euronews.
But unlike many business leaders, Douglas is not driven just by a desire to increase profits and growth. He wants to change the entire chocolate industry…and he has got a tough challenge ahead.
“More volume equals more beans, equals more impact on the ground for farmers [...] That's doubling the number of beans we're sourcing in an ethical way, paying a living income price to West African farmers.”
In this episode of The Big Question, Douglas sat down with Hannah Brown to discuss the real cost of chocolate and the challenges of fighting exploitation.
In case you are not already familiar with Tony’s Chocolonely, it is a chocolate manufacturer founded in 2005 by Dutch documentary producer Teun van de Keuken. Teun was horrified to learn about the scale of exploitation in the chocolate industry’s supply chain, and after his documentary exposing it failed to enact any change, he decided to try to make things better from inside the industry.
