Papua New Guinea is getting ready to showcase some of its sweetest produce at the postponed 2020 World Expo in Dubai.

Cocoa beans. Credit: Pixabay

A Belgian chocolate maker using Papua New Guinean cocoa beans is among the companies that will be highlighted at PNG’s pavilion at Expo 2020* in Dubai later this year.

Meurisse Chocolate NV, established in 1845, has been invited to the pavilion to tell the company’s story about using PNG cocoa.

The European chocolate company is using 100 per cent PNG cocoa to make its dark PNG chocolate brand. The company also mixes the PNG cocoa with nuts and other ingredients to produce other chocolates, including dark caramel and almond.

PNG’s Ambassador to Belgium and the European Union (EU), Joshua Kalinoe, says it is satisfying to see that PNG now has its own brand of chocolate being sold in the EU market.

He says the PNG embassy in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, has been actively promoting PNG products, including cocoa.

Kalinoe, who is also PNG’s Commissioner General to Expo 2020, says that he invited Meurisse Chocolate to join the PNG pavilion to tell the PNG cocoa story from the manufacturer’s perspective.

 

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Among other companies invited are Queen Emma Chocolates, headquartered in Port Moresby, and Highlands Honey.

‘Apart from telling their stories, the idea is to expose them to niche market opportunities in their respective products,’ Kalinoe says.

Everyone wins

He says that the PNG Expo 2020 team is facilitating a win–win atmosphere. The manufacturers are able to create demand for their products, which in turn creates more demand for PNG farmers, therefore boosting exports as well as creating more jobs.

According to Kalinoe, Expo 2020 is about sharing ideas and learning from each other, as well as creating opportunities for trade and investment.

‘This opportunity of bringing participants from the world together in one village to connect and tell their stories on innovation, technology, culture, and wealth creation happens once every four years,’ he says.

Kalinoe says the potential benefits for PNG from Expo 2020 are ‘overwhelming’ and he has urged government bureaucrats and policy makers in Waigani to invest adequately in the event.

*Expo 2020 has been rescheduled from last year because of COVID-19. It will now run from October 1, 2021, until March 31, 2022.

The article How sweet it is was first published in the August/September issue of PNG Now, PNG’s leading lifestyle magazine.