In October 2012 it was announced on the website Confectionerynews.com that ‘Nestle UK and Ireland is doubling its commitment to Fairtrade cocoa by making its two-finger Kit Kat brand Fairtrade from January 2013’, alongside its existing Fairtrade four-finger product. This is reported to require an additional 5,300 tonnes of Fairtrade cocoa and expected to benefit 4,500 Fairtrade cocoa producers in Côte d’Ivoire.

The article observes that Hershey, Ferrero and Mars have already made ‘sweeping pledges to source 100% certified cocoa by 2020’. In some instances this is based on Rainforest Alliance certification and is increasingly focused on the elimination of child labour: Hershey recently committed itself to ‘source 100 percent certified cocoa for its global chocolate lines by 2020 and accelerate its programs to help eliminate child labor in the cocoa regions of West Africa’, with the international ‘Raise the bar’ campaign urging the company to set incremental benchmarks to certify all of its cocoa fair-trade, which has more rigorous requirements. Nestlé has yet to make such wide-ranging future commitments.

Early in 2012, an investigation by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) ‘found numerous child labor violations across Nestlé’s supply chain’. In response to these findings, Nestlé has developed an 11-step plan to address child labour issues. However, NGOs claim that the plan addresses production in zones supplying only 15% of Nestlé’s cocoa needs. Tropical Commodity Coalition’s 2010 Barometer report claimed that ‘just 1.1% of Nestlé’s global 360,000 ton annual cocoa volume’ was derived from ‘certified farms which seek to eradicate child labor’.

On the certification side of the industry, criticisms of the UK Fairtrade organisation were broadcast in a BBC television programme on 10 October 2012, which ‘claimed that consumers were being misled as chocolate bars labeled Fairtrade [might] contain no sustainable cocoa, as beans become mixed at ports and at other stages in the supply chain’. These concerns relate to the traceability of fair-trade certified cocoa beans. There is currently no requirement on manufacturers to hold fair-trade produced cocoa separate from conventional cocoa in the transportation and processing of cocoa beans, since it is argued that this ‘would require millions of pounds of investment’. All that is required is that ‘if Nestlé uses 4,000 tons of cocoa bean to produce four-finger Kit Kats, it must purchase 4,000 tons of Fairtrade cocoa’ and pay the US$200 Fairtrade premium per tonne in order to be able to use the Fairtrade logo for that product.