This year’s chocolate congress Choco Tec, which will take place from 13 to 15 December 2022 in the Congress Centre North of Koelnmesse, is all about change. Presentations, scientific posters and the ideas of the start-ups are based on the overarching topic of transformation. Some aspects of this are climate change, new developments in packaging, food safety or new results at the molecular level, as well as the mega-trends “free from” and sustainability.

The Swiss start-up Koa, for example, opens up new possibilities for the food and beverage industry by utilizing the cocoa pulp and offering pure cocoa fruit juice as a welcome drink to the participants of the event. With their natural cocoa fruit products Koa demonstrate how diversity and resource optimization can succeed.

At the ZHAW Institute for Food and Beverage Innovation (ILGI), scientists have decoded the great variety of aromas in cocoa and identified the aroma substances that contribute significantly to the characteristic chocolate aroma. The result is an aroma kit with 25 reference substances for cocoa and chocolate, which is used for communication between chocolate professionals as well as for training sensory senses.

The presentation by Stefan Geller, CEO of Patiswiss, is about maximizing the food safety of almonds and hazelnuts. The company works with the LOG5 pasteurisation system for heat treatment, which can reduce pathogenic germs such as salmonella or E. coli by 99.999 %.

The start-up QVisions is developing a digital platform for the quality control of cocoa beans. The digital monitoring of test procedures is enriched by machine learning techniques to objectify the results. The software can be used specifically for the education of trained professionals as well as for the traceability of quality controls. At Choco Tec 2022, the team will launch the product for digitalization.