This Valentine’s Day, Give Chocolate With A Heart

This Valentine’s there’s a Divine new opportunity to delight your loved one(s) with a chocolate gift they will find irresistible. Divine, the leading Fairtrade chocolate in the UK, is made with love, from cocoa grown and harvested, fermented and dried by the farmers who co-own the company. And in 2007 Divine will become even more desirable.

From January, Divine will be introducing a sublime new brand design, which both promises the delicious desirability of the chocolate, and will be even more obviously – the heavenly chocolate with a heart!

Bars of the elegant new Divine, in a choice of delicious flavours, will give pleasure in so many ways – beautiful to look at, Divine to taste, and very special because of its unique ethical credentials. Share the love this Valentine’s Day.

The new bars will be available in all major supermarkets, as well as in Oxfam and independent stores nationwide from end of January.

The new design heralds the inclusion of 100% Fairtrade sugar in Divine Chocolate, and celebrates the brand’s co-ownership by Kuapa Kokoo, the cooperative of Ghanaian cocoa farmers. It also coincides with the launch of Divine Dark Chocolate with Mint – a fabulous new combination with Divine’s acclaimed 70% cocoa product. Newly designed bars will be on shelf in all the major supermarkets, as well as Oxfam, Fresh and Wild and other independent stores nationwide by February.

The new design, which builds on the original gold and black Divine colour palette, features a newly enhanced brand logo, and a pattern of Adinkra symbols - traditional Ghanaian signs used frequently on crafts and fabrics, each denoting a different inspiring meaning. The symbols give a decorative clue to the Ghanaian origins of the Fairtrade cocoa in Divine, and the farmers’ co-operative, Kuapa Kokoo, that voted to set up the company at their AGM in 1997.

The new design has been presented to Kuapa Kokoo headquarters and the Ghanaian reference has caused great delight and pleasure! It was created for Divine by Williams Murray Hamm.

The new livery is a celebration of Divine’s increasing popularity with consumers who love chocolate, and who care about its provenance and the people who depend on it. Since launching in 1998 Divine has become a favourite with a wide range of consumers from Fairtrade activists and ethical consumers, to chocolate lovers who have discovered what an exceptional product it is.

Divine is now available in all the major supermarket chains in the country, as well as many schools, businesses and leisure facilities. This has meant that Kuapa Kokoo, which now has several thousand members, has been able to rely on a constantly growing regular income, and a premium which they invest in farm and community improvements. The farmers decide on how the funds are spent, and have sunk wells, built schools and sanitation blocks, and arranged mobile healthcare.

Regular Fairtrade income has also meant that Kuapa Kokoo can attract bank loans, and build their business capacity, as well as offering its members a reliable and preferential credit loan facility, and training in additional income-making skills such as batik, tie-dye, and bread-making.

The new design will initially be appearing on all the Divine Chocolate bars, and will be rolling out on all the other products, including Drinking Chocolate, After Dinner Mints, Divine Delights and seasonal specialities over the next six months.