Lacmi by ROSHEN, Ukraine

Welcome to the first chocolate exploration!

Today's chocolate is Lacmi, produced by ROSHEN in Ukraine. A brand I was not familiar with myself, I'm excited to dig in!

I have split the categories into the broad areas they fall under, in case you'd like to go straight to a certain topic (country of manufacture, vendor, the product itself and finally the sustainability of the manufacturer)

Disclaimer: The bar I purchased did not fare well in the hot Bulgarian weather. The normally sleek bar was - for lack of a better word - munted by the time I got back to my AirBnB. Please excuse the lumps and bumps of the bar in these photos (although we can agree that chocolate is beautiful in all shapes and sizes).

Producer Country

Ukraine?

This is what immediately stood out to me! Not to mention that they, as of the publishing of this blog, are in the midst of a brutal war from Russian invasion, Ukraine isn't a manufacturer of chocolate that immediately comes to mind. Indeed, a large proportion of the world's chocolate is manufactured in Switzerland, Belgium and Germany (who house factories for household brands and other manufacturers that produce chocolate for many smaller lines in the same factory), so Ukrainian-made chocolate was a bit of a surprise.

A quick search on chocolate exports (using data from the World Bank) show that Ukraine has a large chocolate industry, although it is relatively small in comparison to other producers (30% and 14% the size of Switzerland's exports by volume and value respectively, 9% and 8% of Germany's, and 3% of both volume and value of Belgium's). I've added in a few other countries for reference too, picked on a whim from the list. On the World Bank's table, Ukraine sits between Croatia and Vietnam:

Vendor

Where was this for sale?

I purchased it in a chain Austrian-based supermarket in Bulgaria, which is a member of the European Union (EU). This immediately piqued my interest because there is free trade within the EU. As such, there are generally associated tariffs with importing this non-EU good, so why would an EU supermarket import it over chocolate covered by the free trade arrangement? What economic incentives exist for a supermarket to favour this over an EU-produced good? Because the EU also has a free trade agreement with Ukraine. Therefore, the choice to stock this bar is likely to be due to its lower price than EU-produced competitors.

I paid 3.89 LEV (2.32 USD) for this 90 gram bar. If we assume that the supermarket applies an 0.18EUR margin on the bar per kg (as calculated by the FAO/ECA publication on the distribution of value of a chocolate bar), let's assume they paid xxx for it.

Other similar bars at this supermarket cost around 4.49 LEV, so we see that this bar is slightly cheaper than competitors.

Product

How does it taste?

Ingredients
Google Translate reports that the ingredients are:
Sugar, whole milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, roasted hazelnut kernels 👀, milk fat, emulsifier, lecithin, vanilla flavouring. (with at least 30% cocoa)

As you may imagine, it is sweet. It is smooth and slightly rubbery in its half-melted state (there are no hazelnut bits). I had not expected the plain milk chocolate to have hazelnut in it, especially when it isn't labelled pictured in the front packaging! Akin to other mass-produced chocolates, it has a standard chocolate flavour without any notes that single origin chocolate provides. I'm not sure why there is hazelnut in there, but it is not an unwelcome presence in the mix. 

Sustainability

Who made it?

ROSHEN Confectionery Corp was founded in 1996 and it produces a variety of confectionery goods, which are primarily exported to countries in central Asia.

There are no references to sustainability on the ROSHEN website, making it difficult to evaluate their sourcing and purchasing practices in their supply chain. They do, however, invest into local community projects and funds, which represents a certain level of social sustainability at the local level. Of course, we know that Ukraine is at war and it thus can be difficult to maintain production, let alone sourcing programmes, at this time.

Therefore, there is not much information I can leverage to understand where their cocoa comes from. This, however, won't be the case for most of the chocolate brands I shall explore!

See you in the next blog!