Papua New Guinea’s very own gourmet chocolate may have only been on sale for a few weeks, but its production line has already been honoured with a visit from the recent business delegation that accompanied the Thai Prime Minister.

PNG is one of the world’s major cocoa producers and its exports finds their way into the confectionary of the world’s leading chocolate producers, ranging from multinational Mars to boutique Australian chocolatier, Zokoko.

But until now no one was actually producing premium PNG chocolate on-shore.

Enter Paradise Foods, one of PNG’s leading food manufacturers, which launched the Queen Emma brand of ‘single source’ chocolate on to the local retail market in January.

During the testing phase in 2012, Managing Director David Peate told Business Advantage PNG that the state-of-the-art technology it was using allowed Paradise to ‘use the whole bean without any additional cocoa butter, resulting in a very pure rich taste’.

The range includes the Stone Ground and Markham Valley dark chocolate (75%) – the latter has a delightful hint of organic PNG vanilla – as well as Lovina Milk and Queen Emma Gold milk chocolate varieties.

The packaging is suitably up-market but with a very Papua New Guinean touch. While each chocolate is individually wrapped, the packet itself is handmade from Kunai Grass, courtesy of a ‘CPL Group Community Service Initiative’.

The chocolate is currently on sale in the duty free shop at Jacksons Airport and is being supplied wholesale to local restaurants.