After years at sea and years of study, Karl embarked on a long overdue OE which took him through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and continued through Mexico, South and Central America. During this trip he had two life changing experiences, he met (soon to be wife) Marina in Buenos Aires and he “discovered” cacao in Guatemala.

Trying real cacao for the first time got Karl thinking about how chocolate is made and where it comes from. He started to investigate and soon found how to make chocolate at home.

We source the highest quality cacao beans from around the world to create small batches of chocolate using traditional techniques. Our small factory is located in Nelson, New Zealand and our process uses minimal ingredients and is focused on preserving the natural flavours within the cacao to create a chocolate with a true cacao flavour, a flavour lost in industrialised processing.

Together with Ana Aceves of Sugarcube Studios we developed a chocolate bar and packaging design which illustrates Karl’s journey from sailor to chocolate maker, and the voyage the cacao takes to reach our distant pacific island.