Swiss chocolate company Nestlé is rolling out its latest chocolate innovation, Incoa. The launch brings the cocoa pulp-sweetened chocolate to a broad audience across several countries. 

It will appear on shelves in retail in France and the Netherlands with other European markets to follow, says Nestlé.

Incoa is a 70 percent dark chocolate bar made exclusively with the cocoa fruit under the Les Recettes de L’Atelier brand.

No refined sugar
Incoa is made entirely from the cocoa fruit, not adding any refined sugar. In 2019, Nestlé was the first to announce this approach and then launched it with KitKat in Japan.

“This breakthrough allows us to deliver a great-tasting dark chocolate while also integrating agricultural side-streams into our value chain, a key priority for our sustainability agenda,” says Louise Barrett, head of the Nestlé Confectionery Product Technology Center in York, UK.

Nestlé leveraged its in-house chocolate expertise to develop a patented natural approach to extract the pulp and produce a dark chocolate that captures the pulp’s intrinsic sweetness and texture. 

This approach enables the company to produce Incoa in high quantities with no compromise on taste, texture and quality.

The cocoa fruit contains cocoa beans and cocoa pulp. The pulp, which makes up around 10 percent of the fruit, surrounds the beans and is soft, sweet and white in color. 

Harnessing fermentation
Some of the pulp is used in the fermentation of the cocoa beans after they are harvested, but a significant proportion is usually discarded. In some countries, the pulp is commercialized as juice or frozen and used as an ingredient in ice cream and other food products.

“Incoa is an authentic, pure cocoa experience. People are looking for something that little bit different and more sustainable from their chocolate. The fact that Incoa is made from the cocoa fruit and nothing else means it cuts waste and brings additional value to the cocoa sector,” adds Alexander von Maillot, head of confectionery at Nestlé.

The cocoa pulp for Incoa is currently sourced from Brazil from farms that are part of the Nestlé Cocoa Plan, and Nestlé is working on expanding the sourcing of the pulp across Cocoa Plan farms globally.

Nestlé is currently working with cocoa cooperatives and other partners in West Africa to test how cocoa pulp production could be commercialized. That includes testing collection and further treatment of the pulp.