Fair Trade company Gepa increases chocolate sales

Despite the Corona crisis, sales of the fair trade organization have been rising by 12.6 per cent within last year. However, Gepa has seen declines in seasonal chocolate products.

The fair trade organization Gepa sold around 1,281 tons of confectionery in 2020 - 12.6 percent more than in the previous year. That equates to 15.7 million chocolate products, Gepa announced this week. According to Gepa, around 93 percent of the chocolate items were certified organic, "mostly even by the higher Naturland standard."

In the case of seasonal goods such as Easter bunnies and Santa Clauses, on the other hand, Gepa had to record declines due to Corona. These products, in addition to campaign groups, are mainly sold through charity stores, which had to close in the spring or had shortened opening hours. In addition, there were no Christmas markets during the Advent season, where, according to Gepa, many seasonal products are usually also sold.

Instead, Gepa gave away tens of thousands of chocolate bishops as part of its "Thank You Santa Claus" campaign to children, the elderly, the sick, prisoners and staff who kept the public infrastructure running in the Corona Year 2020, including teachers, fire and rescue service personnel, and workers in hospices, retirement homes, hospitals and correctional facilities.

By the middle of the year, Gepa wants to sell 100,000 bars of its "Choco4Change" climate chocolate. According to Gepa, 20 cents per bar will finance a total of 8,500 trees of the cocoa cooperative CECAC-11 on the African island of São Tomé and 400 energy-efficient wood stoves of the coffee cooperative KCU in Tanzania in East Africa.

Gepa says it paid its partner cooperatives in Latin America and Africa an average of about 3,600 Dollars per metric ton of organic cocoa last year, 56 per cent more than the average on the world market.