Israeli-based tech start-up Celleste Bio has unveiled a milk chocolate bar made using real cocoa butter grown in a bioreactor.

Celleste Bio has developed a technology capable of producing chocolate-grade cocoa butter that is bio-identical to conventionally sourced cocoa butter.

Food company Mondelēz International, owner of Cadbury and Toblerone, has now used this lab-grown cocoa butter to make a dozen chocolate bars. While these bars may look like the real deal, would this chocolate taste as good as the genuine article? Indeed, no difference was detected in terms of texture, melt profile and sensory experience.

Having achieved this milestone, Celleste Bio now expects to scale production of its cocoa butter to market-ready quantities within the next two years.

Cocoa is traditionally grown in tropical regions near the equator, but climate change, deforestation and geopolitical issues are threatening the supply of cocoa beans used to produce cocoa butter.

Michal Beressi Golomb, CEO at Celleste Bio, said: “Celleste launched in 2022 with the mission to secure a sustainable future for the global chocolate industry. In three years we’ve made unprecedented progress to meet this formidable scientific challenge.

“We’ve validated our ingredients as drop-in replacements, created an operational R&D pilot facility to scale up our volumes and now proven our cocoa butter performs identically to conventional cocoa, clearing the next phase to commercial scale.”

Celleste Bio’s technology works by extracting cocoa cells from one to two cocoa beans, which are then grown in a controlled setting inside a bioreactor using water and nutrients. In this system, the cells multiply continuously. Celleste Bio claims that about one tonne of cocoa butter can be created from a single cocoa pod, which on average contains about 40 cocoa beans.

Hanne Volpin, chief technical and scientific officer at Celleste Bio, said: “Building a resilient supply chain means being able to produce at commercial volumes while offsetting disruptions caused by climate change, deforestation and resource scarcity. 

“We are on track to produce one tonne of cocoa butter annually in a 1,000-litre bioreactor from a single bean, which would otherwise require about a hectare of cocoa trees. To that end, we’ve curated a very robust bank of multiple cocoa bean varietals we can use to grow, test and scale material.”

It says that its lab-grown cocoa butter can work as a drop-in replacement by manufacturers in the making of chocolate. However, using AI computational modelling the cocoa butter can also be tweaked according to manufacturer or customer preferences – for instance, cocoa butter that has a higher melting point or a particular flavour.