Sophi Tranchell says if Divine can break into a multi-billion pound market, there are high hopes for other social companies

It’s easy to see why - she manages a fairtrade company with a turnover of £9 million, which is holding its own in the multi-billion pound chocolate industry. But Divine’s business model bears no resemblance to that of any of the big chocolate names.

The company was set up by farmers’ cooperative Kuapa Kokoo with the help of Twin Trading, The Body Shop, Christian Aid and Comic Relief, in 1999. And it’s still party owned by the farmers, who earn a good price for their beans.

Over time, she says, Divine would like to expand to other farmer organisations as it grows other markets in the North (the world’s Northern Hemisphere). The company has already been using fairtrade sugar from Malawi since January 2007.

True empowerment

The advantage of the way Divine works, its unique selling point, reminds Tranchell, is the fact that the farmers own 45% of the business. “That is empowerment,” she says. “And however much Marks & Spencer does fair trade, we’re doing something that’s significantly different.”

Part of the reason that farmers own almost half of Divine today, is thanks to the late Body Shop founder Anita Roddick. In 1997, Kuapa Kokoo voted to set up Divine, and Twin Trading came back to find people to invest in the company. Anita rang her husband Gordon and asked him to invest in it. The Body Shop was the first company to buy cocoa from farmers at a fairtrade price.

Last year, The Body Shop donated its shares in Divine Chocolate to the cooperative, and Anita also visited the Kuapa Kokoo farmers and funded a school for some of their children.

A social upbringing

Picture: Sophi at Kuapa's 10th AGM

After her studies she worked on peace and justice issues at her University Chaplaincy. And, while there, she helped establish a Southern African Scholarship and sold fairtrade products from Traidcraft.

When she started at the chocolate company in 1999, after a decade working in the film industry, fairtrade was in its infancy in the UK, with just 11% of the public aware of its meaning. But, today, thanks in no small way to Cafedirect and Divine, who proudly exhibit the Fairtrade Foundation mark, awareness rose to 70% in 2008.

No limits

Like the rise in knowledge of fairtrade, Sophi believes that social enterprise has become much more widely understood in recent years. “It has now become part of people’s vocabulary; there are good examples of significantly scaled social enterprises winning public contracts and tenders on things like bus routes and swimming pools and recycling contracts.” That shows there is probably no limit to what the sector can achieve.”

“When we set up Divine we were trying to break into the most valuable chocolate market in world, worth £3.6 billion,” explains Sophi. “Eighty percent of the market is owned by three players: Mars, Cadbury’s and Nestle. It’s also an incredibly mature market.

“Business advisors and bankers didn’t think we were likely to be very successful. Business support advisors still need to be up-to-date on how new business models work. They need to be more cutting-edge,” she adds.

As an ambassador Sophi feels the challenge is getting people to realise how broad social enterprise is. “For example, when people hear me talk about chocolate, do they realise that there might be something they could do in their community that has some resemblance to what Divine is doing?”

“If we’ve managed to do what we’ve done in such a competitive market, that must mean there is actually a lot of opportunity to mobilise consumers to make decisions on what they buy in order to benefit people. I feel as if there’s a nice optimism there,” she concludes.