Chocolates from Italian Claudio Corallo disappeared in international Bean to Bar market

The reason is air transport management inefficiency in São Tomé and Príncipe, in Africa.

Since the beginning of March, when Covid-19 pandemic started, Bean to Bar chocolates by Claudio Corallo (www.claudiocorallo.com), considered the best worldwide, read the story here, disappeared from the international market. The crisis was announced even before the virus took over the globe, thanks to a more lethal problem: incompetence of authorities who could not create basic airport safety structures to ensure continuity of air cargo transportation between São Tomé and Príncipe and the rest of the world.

Claudio Corallo factory, which produced around six tons of chocolate a year, had to be closed recently and approximately 200 direct and indirect jobs simply disappeared.

Since mid-2018, the country’s air company, STP-Airways, and Portuguese carrier TAP stopped transporting cargo leaving São Tomé airport, thanks to the disregard to international safety laws practiced in the airport.

Claudio Corallo then started to export his chocolates and special coffees via Luanda, Angola capital, to Europe, which made transportation cost increase products price in up to four times.

To make matters worse, TAP stopped flying to Angola in the beginning of the pandemic, in March, which simply stopped exportation of the so famous Claudio Corallo chocolates. “We could only export almonds, via boats, but this activity does not cover the company’s costs. The only solution is to transfer São Tomé factory to some European country like Portugal, Spain, France or Italy. This is the only way to retake our production of Bean to Bar chocolates”, he says.

“With a factory in Europe we can again receive almonds from farms and transform them into chocolate. For such we need a factory in one of these countries, and it may occur through partnership with some food company that already counts on a factory ready to operate or we can find an investor to assemble a factory starting from scratch”, explains Claudio.

“In May, last year, I sent a letter to São Tomé and Príncipe Prime Minister Jorge Bom Jesus, requesting a hearing on the subject, but I was given no answer. I informed all international organs like FAO, World Bank, UN, European Union and African Bank of Development of the relevance of the subject and nobody listened to me. It is a shave, since it represents a setback of several decades in the African country development, which needs so much international assistance to improve its population conditions”, concludes Corallo.