Voyage Foods’ Cocoa-Free Chocolate Far More Sustainable Than Traditional Chocolate, as Validated by Independent Third Party

OAKLAND, Calif.— Voyage Foods, the Bay Area food innovation company that combines breakthrough technology and upcycled wholesome ingredients to secure the future of our favorite foods, releases a comprehensive life cycle assessment on the food tech start-up’s revolutionary clean label, plant-based cocoa-free chocolate. Voyage Foods’ technology has serious backing behind it, after raising an additional $22 million last week, the company’s funding is now at $64 million with some of the top VCs in food including Valor Equity Partners, Horizons Ventures, UBS O’Connor, Level One Fund and more.

According to an independent, third-party validated report from Sphera, Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free “milk” and semi-sweet chocolate are the most sustainable chocolates ever to come to market – moreover at a price point that enables accessible sustainability for all. Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free “milk” chocolate (which is entirely dairy-free) was compared to traditional milk chocolate, showcasing groundbreaking results across both traditional and plant-based chocolate markets.

Using Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free chocolate rather than traditional chocolate significantly reduces the environmental impact of blue water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and the effects of harmful land use.

Compared to traditional chocolate, Voyage Foods cocoa-free chocolate:

Requires 99% less blue water equating to 67 times less blue water consumption

Generates up to 84% less greenhouse gas emissions

Produces up to 88% fewer emissions from land use change, a major cause of deforestation in cocoa-bean chocolate production regions

“At Voyage Foods, we are focused on addressing the environmentally harmful aspects of the chocolate industry and creating more sustainable, scalable, delicious counterparts. Whether you’re looking at water use, land use, greenhouse gas emissions or deforestation, it’s clear that the production of traditional chocolate is problematic – and our cocoa-free chocolate is a much-needed solution,” replied CEO and co-founder Adam Maxwell. “We’re proposing that food companies can make more sustainable and ethically sourced products at a cost that on the industrial side is significantly less than current alternatives.”

Working towards a future where competitively priced production and sustainable planetary health can (and must) co-exist, Voyage Foods’ mission is to activate industry-wide change by partnering exclusively with B2B customers and bring cocoa-free chocolate to their portfolios. Since its inception three years ago, Voyage Foods has commercialized and scaled their operation with offerings in “milk”, semi-sweet, and dark cocoa-free chocolate, offering a 1:1 substitute to conventional chocolate in both flavor and texture while empowering manufacturers to bypass the chocolate industry’s unsustainable environmental issues and vulnerability to costly and unpredictable supply chain instability.

Using a combination of proprietary technology and upcycled seeds and fruits, Voyage Foods reimagines our favorite foods into counterparts that will transform our food ecosystem for the better and mitigate climate change before it’s too late.

Additionally, Voyage Foods provides industry manufacturers with supply chain and price stability that provide significantly better margins. In 2023 alone, bulk cocoa rose to its highest price in the past 50 years, and there was a worldwide 150 million pound cocoa shortage. By using upcycled ingredients that are less expensive to source, widely available, and readily scalable, Voyage avoids at-risk commodity ingredients that are vulnerable to price fluctuations. Consequently, their CPG partners can integrate Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free chocolate into their products and provide their customers with a delicious, environmentally beneficial experience at fair and stable pricing.

Voyage Foods life cycle assessment (LCA) considered the environmental impacts of cocoa-free “milk” and semi-sweet chocolate versus those of conventional chocolate across every impact category studied in the report: blue water consumption and emissions from greenhouse gasses and land use change.

Sphera, the ESG consulting firm, validated the data and LCA model, meeting the requirements for LCA studies set by International Organization of Standardization (ISO), considered the gold standard in environmental assessments.

About Voyage Foods

Voyage Foods was born out of a deep hunger to harness the power of technology to secure the future of our favorite foods. Founded in 2021 by Adam Maxwell and Kelsey Tenney, a duo with extensive experience in food science, their team is able to recreate the classics without exploiting their source ingredients, starting with a Peanut-Free Spread and Hazelnut-Free Spread now available at Walmart. Voyage’s products are always made from real, wholesome ingredients and are more sustainable than their counterparts. In addition to the Spreads, Voyage also sells Cocoa-Free Chocolate and Bean-Free Coffee to other food manufacturers and within the foodservice channel.

For More Information:
https://voyagefoods.com/our-impact