How King Charles put power into our ethical cacao programme, Saint Lucia 2008

With the Coronation of King Charles fast approaching, we’re reflecting on the time King Charles visited our cacao farm at Rabot Estate in Saint Lucia in 2008. We interviewed our founder and CEO, Angus Thirlwell and asked him to share his memories.

Take us back to 2008 and set the context for what was happening with Rabot Estate just before King Charles visited.

In 2008 Peter Harris, my co-founder, and I had only recently invested in Rabot Estate in Saint Lucia and we had to quickly learn about cacao growing. Pretty soon we realised that we needed an ethical programme to make it right for cacao growers in Saint Lucia. At this time on the island, cacao growers weren’t making enough money and interest in cacao farming was waning. We needed to do something different and that was the genesis of our ‘Engaged Ethics’ programme, which fitted with Hotel Chocolat’s values of being ethical and authentic.

Before we get into the visit from King Charles, can you bring to life why ‘Engaged Ethics’ was important?

For us, being ethical meant doing the right thing and not just saying it. Becoming a cacao grower ourselves in Saint Lucia allowed us to learn first-hand what it’s like to grow cacao so we could make cacao growing fairer for farmers. We didn’t just write a cheque – we got stuck in, with boots on the ground. Yes, we paid farmers well above market-rate, but more importantly we were learning first-hand about taking care of the environment through sustainable farming practices. We were discovering how to support on-farm and pre-harvest activities that improve climate resilience and productivity. Cacao is a crop that thrives in biodiversity and loves shade, and we were uncovering how to achieve the best of both worlds – more fertile farmlands with greater climate resilience and increased cacao productivity, making cacao growing profitable for farmers again in Saint Lucia.

So how did the visit from King Charles come about?

Shortly after we invested in the Rabot Estate in Saint Lucia and launched Engaged Ethics, we got approached by the diplomatic service to say King Charles is doing a trip to the Commonwealth countries of the Caribbean and we think your project might pique his interest. We explained in more detail what we were learning about cacao growing through Engaged Ethics, and they said it’s exactly these types of sustainable and ethical initiatives that King Charles was looking to explore. He was particularly interested in initiatives that linked British businesses with the people of the Caribbean. And that was it – it was confirmed he was definitely coming, and we thought, wow OK… this is amazing!

Tell us about the visit itself…

King Charles duly showed up with his entourage and we had a full two hours with him walking around and explaining to him our vision, actions and what we wanted to achieve with cacao growing, both in Saint Lucia and beyond. King Charles profoundly helped our programme in two ways. Firstly, in the community in Saint Lucia – we were only just getting established and people weren’t sure what to make of us. His visit put us on the map in the most emphatic way possible. We had amazing PR, great local support and our team were so motivated by him coming.

Secondly, in candid and open conversations with me and with Peter, King Charles opened up about his own initiatives that he had been trying to get to work, particularly one in Guyana in South America where he launched something similar to Engaged Ethics and he openly said he struggled to get it working. King Charles said he loved the Engaged Ethics programme and stated ‘if you can make this work, you’d have done something really, really good that’s difficult to pull off! So, keep going and you know I believe in you, and I think you can do it.’ At a time when we were experiencing a lot of difficulties in learning how to be cacao farmers and getting the programme to really build momentum, he gave us a shot in the arm. We’re always so thankful for that.

We heard King Charles got stuck in with spade! Tell us about that part…

Yes! During the visit we got King Charles to cut the earth for what has now become Project Chocolat, our six acre visitor attraction which shows our cacao farm in action. In Rabot Estate that day we assembled some of the local senior politicians from Saint Lucia and the Honourable Ezekiel Joseph, who was the Minister of Agriculture attended as part of this. They both took turns cutting the earth which we captured in this symbolic photograph…

When Ezekiel picked up the spade, King Charles quipped ‘this is the first time in my career I’ve ever seen a Minister of Agriculture actually pick up a spade!’ which went down really well…Ezekiel thankfully laughed along with everybody and enjoyed the joke! It was a humorous yet poignant moment that indicated how relaxed King Charles felt being with us and how genuinely supportive of our programme he was, in an authentic and understanding way, which came from a place of experience and insight into the hard work it takes to be a cacao grower.

15 years later, how’s it going in Saint Lucia now? Are you where you thought you’d be with Engaged Ethics?

Yes, and more! It’s taken us the best part of 15 years to build Project Chocolat in Saint Lucia but we’ve persevered. It’s been a labour of love and now it’s fully open and flourishing and it’s a unique place in the world. We can truly trace that right back to King Charles cutting the earth and giving us a shot in the arm when we were feeling vulnerable and experiencing a bit of difficulty in making our programme work. Project Chocolat is not only a cacao model farm, but also a visitor attraction where we share our methods with thousands of visitors from around the world every year.

‘Engaged Ethics’ has evolved into our gentle farming method, which we have now also applied to where we source 97% of our chocolate in Ghana. As we expanded across Saint Lucia, we learned some key factors to meaningfully supporting farmers. Among them, a simple principle: we guarantee to buy the whole crop from every farmer at a premium price, well above market rate. And, crucially, we support, empower and reward them for engaging in farming methods that are truly sustainable.

Ghana is an area of the world with particularly complex challenges; an area where many ethical companies fear to tread. At Hotel Chocolat, we’re nothing if not determined, though. We launched this gentle farming approach in Ghana in September 2021, which is open to all our 2,500 partner farmers in the Eastern region of Ghana where we continue to learn because ethical cacao growing is a journey, not a destination.