Cargill’s new chocolate alternative, which avoids cocoa markets that sent the price of candy on a rollercoaster ride in recent years, just tastes chocolaty.

Kernels of the grape-seed-derived product called NextCoa, shown off in one of Cargill’s Minnesota corporate kitchens on a recent Friday, elevated fresh-baked cookies to taste like they emerged from a bakery. The sweet chocolate-alternative with vegan, allergen-free ingredients coated pretzels and made for indulgent truffles.

The treat, invented by food startup Voyage Foods, is now launching in North America at a time when the price of cocoa is recovering from inflation-driven chaos. NextCoa is a tool for food companies to avoid future cocoa-caused turbulence — including Cargill, which also processes cocoa.

“This is something that’s indulgent and delicious, but it’s not really trying to be an exact match to anything,” said Abby Bauer, Cargill’s director of sensory consumer science for North America.

Cargill executives said NextCoa’s advantage is not just price. The product has a smaller carbon footprint compared with conventional chocolate. It also avoids cocoa’s complex supply chain, which is prone to drought, plant disease and labor issues. Voyage founder Adam Maxwell said prospective customers include large consumer packaged goods companies, and the chocolate alternative may land in everyday treats such as ice cream, cookies and snack bars.

Voyage and Cargill did not disclose the financials of their agreement, but Cargill Chief Technology Officer Florian Schattenmann called it a close collaboration. The Minnetonka-based food giant’s task is to get the treat to customers and expand the product’s reach.

Last month, Cargill’s submission for NextCoa won gold at the Edison Awards, which recognize global innovation. The achievement was the result of years of chemistry and food science for Maxwell.

“One of the rules we had from Day Zero was, ‘This stuff can’t just taste like chocolate, it has to function like chocolate,’” Maxwell said.

The California-based CEO first grew a love for making food in his youth, asking for a Kitchen Aid mixer as a birthday present at age 12 and working in pastry kitchens by 14.

After college, Maxwell worked for a large food manufacturer’s confectionary division, tasked with producing chocolate more efficiently. In this role, Maxwell identified the long-term risks and difficulties in the cocoa supply chain.

Cocoa grows on trees between 20 degrees north and south of the equator, and Cargill has processed the plant into chocolate for about 40 years, working with farmers in countries such as Ghana, Brazil and Indonesia, said Kojo Amoo-Gottfried, Cargill’s managing director for cocoa and chocolate in in North America.

A supply disruption struck just after the pandemic due to a virus that causes swollen shoot disease, drastically cutting yields in West Africa, Amoo-Gottfried said. From March 2021 to Jan 2025, the global price of cocoa increased more than fourfold, leading to a decline in consumption.

“Throughout that process,” Amoo-Gottfried said, “as you can imagine, people are looking at alternatives, looking at different ways to continue to engage their customers. And so it made something like the partnership [with Voyage] a good fit.”

Maxwell initially started researching NextCoa in 2019, thinking that the taste of chocolate is a product of its production process, as opposed to relying solely on its best-known input — cocoa — for flavor.

“There’s nothing … in a cocoa seed that you can’t find in other parts of the world,” Maxwell said. He zeroed in on grape seeds, which like cocoa beans are high in chemical components called phenolics. The seeds are widely available and affordable, he said, as they are a waste product of winemaking and other processes.

“Most grape seeds that go into things like wine and juice and other processed things end up totally thrown away and in landfills, so we can take that,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell declined to go into details on how NextCoa is manufactured due to intellectual property concerns. But he said the company’s production work inside its roughly 300,000-square-foot factory in Mason, Ohio, looks “kind of indistinguishable” compared with a typical chocolate factory, aside from the input: grape seeds instead of cocoa. Sunflower-seed flour, vegetable fats, sugar and natural flavor also make up the chocolate alternative.

“We’ve always said that the science is in the lab and not in the factory,” Maxwell said. “There’s no crazy biotech or fermentation or cell growth or anything like that.” The large factory went online late last year.

Maxwell said he signed the Cargill partnership because the company’s employees are the “best people in the world to help” NextCoa succeed. Through this partnership, he believes he can have the largest environmental and industrial impact.

Aside from producing 67% less carbon dioxide than typical chocolate production, Cargill has reported the production process uses 95% less water and has a 90% smaller land-use impact.

The product also sidesteps a complicated supply chain affected by labor and logistical issues.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 threw out a lawsuit accusing Cargill and another company of knowingly helping perpetuate slavery at Ivory Coast cocoa farms. The company now works with Ivory Coast authorities to secure birth certificates for children in cocoa-growing communities to improve education access and reduce child labor, the company said in its annual impact report.

Bauer said the majority of the product’s grape seeds are sourced in North America, shortening the supply chain.

NextCoa has already sold to consumers in Europe, where conventional chocolate is getting regulated to prevent deforestation. Companies can buy the product in mild and dark-mild flavors, in pieces shaped like drops or wafers.

“What is clear is all our customers are looking for diversity in their portfolio,” Amoo-Gottfried said.

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