Nestle Chocolate to add rich, dark varieties

LAUSANNE, Switzerland Nestle SA has announced plans to respond to demands from older buyers in many countries who crave darker chocolates, the Nestle’s head of chocolate operations, Petraea Heynike has said.

“Dark chocolate is a still-accelerating trend. Even countries which have no dark chocolate tradition are successfully introducing such products. ‘Premiumization,’ the move towards refined chocolate, is another important trend. In our strengthened focus on premium, we want to increase our use of high-quality raw materials and production methods,” she said.

Nestle’s presence in the global market, worth about $90.37 billion U.S.D. and showing growth of about 5 percent per year, annually, places the food company in second place with about 12.5 percent of the market (it is second to Mars Inc. which currently holds about 14.8 percent).

Nestle has launched more than 200 new chocolate products in the past few years, and is is the global leader in dark chocolate, Heynike said. Heynike and Nestle also emphasized the dark chocolate’s purported health benefits, citing data from Nestle’s research and development team.