16/06/2026
Mark and Jeff's PNG Adventures 🌍🍫
In April, we packed our bags and joined Oonagh and a group of 15 international chocolate makers and cacao experts for two unforgettable weeks in Papua New Guinea.
Before the main group even arrived, we were already hard at work – travelling to local cacao growing communities to run "local Milo" hot chocolate making workshops, showing farmers how to turn the cacao growing right outside their door into something delicious, using ingredients they already have to hand. 🍫
Then it was on to the main event: the Greater Sepik Cocoa of Excellence and Trade Expo in Wewak – a celebration of PNG's extraordinary cacao and the incredible communities who grow it.
Jeff and Oonagh took on the serious business of judging the Cocoa of Excellence Awards, tasting cacao samples from the country's top 59 farms alongside an international panel. Mark, meanwhile, helped facilitate the entire judging process – no small task with that many samples and that much at stake!
We also ran a local Milo demo at the expo's hot chocolate competition, sharing the knowledge and technique with around 20 local entrants from villages across East Sepik, before the judging began.
And of course, there was an adventure or two along the way – including a four-hour drive on roads that turned into rivers after a tropical downpour, with Mark rolling up his sleeves to pull a very stuck vehicle out of the mud. 😅
From remote village visits with incredible welcomes, song and dance, to being part of a moment that PNG cacao farmers and the international chocolate world will be talking about for years to come – this was a trip we will never forget.
Pacific cacao. Pacific connections. This is what it's all about. 🌿
Huge thanks to the good people at the PNG Cocoa Board, EU STREIT, and many others for making this event possible. 🙏
