Lotte’s fine formula for sweet chocolate success

Ghana Chocolate

Ghana Chocolate, famous for its commercial slogan, “With Ghana even solitude is sweet,” made its debut in 1975. It is the oldest brand of chocolate manufactured by a Korean company.

Ghana, which is made by Lotte, also holds the No. 1 spot in the local chocolate market with a share of 40 percent, even when imported brands of chocolate are included.

Lotte worked hard to find a following in Japan, and then Korea.

Lotte Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho said that although the company had been a late entry to the Japanese chocolate market, its presence there grew rapidly.

In the 1960s the chocolate market in Japan was divided between Morinaga and Meiji. But Lotte, which was already operating in Korea and Japan at the time, was looking for a way in.

In the 1970s, the chocolate sold in Korea used imported half-processed cacao beans that were then melted down and molded into chocolate.

But this method was unsatisfactory to Shin. He ordered his Korean employees back to the drawing board. Using a process already in practice at Lotte’s Japanese factory, they roasted the imported beans until they shed their skins before the melting and molding process began. It worked.

In 1974 the company bought a chocolate manufacturing facility worth $200,000 and installed it at a plant in the Yeongdeungpo District, southwestern Seoul.

But the biggest challenge the confectionery giant faced was in making a chocolate to meet the tastes of its Korean consumers.

Lotte set its sights on developing a much softer and milder chocolate than was sold in Japan. The chocolate sold there used wild cacao, which was strong tasting. The Korean research team went through several taste tests before coming up with the right formula.

Next, they had to find the right beans. Although the beans from the African nation Ivory Coast, were high in quality, they were not in ample supply because they were harvested by individual farmers.

In the end, they chose to import beans from Ghana, the country that gave the chocolate its name.

“To produce the best taste we used Ghana beans that were traded at $1,600 per ton, which was $100 more than the beans from other places,” said Lee Man-jong, a Lotte executive.

In the early 1990s, the company invested 30 billion won ($23 million) to install a facility that would automatically make cacao beans into a complete chocolate product, according to Hong Seung-gyun, executive of Lotte R&D Center.

By Choi Ji-young [ojlee82@joongang.co.kr]