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Developing Dynamic Carbon Accounting Tools for Cocoa Value Chains
Main TrackSustainable AgrifoodGCB
Up to S$20,000 in POC / pilot fundingUp to S$20,000 POC Development Grant
Guan Chong Berhad (GCB)
is a Malaysia-based, fully integrated cocoa processor and ingredients supplier. It manufactures cocoa butter, cocoa mass, cocoa powder and other derivatives through facilities in Malaysia, Indonesia and Cote D’Ivoire, serving major chocolate makers globally.
Carbon emissions are a major sustainability challenge in cocoa supply chains, driven by land use change, farming practices, transport, and processing. Accurate measurement and management are critical for compliance, customer reporting, and meeting global climate targets. GCB aims to have validated FLAG (Forests, Land and Agriculture) targets and begin the SBTi validation process in 2027.
Currently, GCB relies on an external carbon accounting service for emissions reporting. This type of service provides a baseline but has major limitations:
- Updates are available only once or twice per year, with no ability to track progress dynamically.
- Results are often presented as aggregated totals, limiting visibility into specific emission drivers across the value chain.
- Heavy reliance on generic emission factors makes it costly and difficult to adapt for cocoa-specific activities.
GCB has direct and indirect supply chains. Direct supply chains are cases where GCB has a direct relationship with suppliers and can access plot-level data. For example, farms that are geo-mapped, where detailed information such as farm size, input use, and yields are available. Indirect supply chains are cases where GCB sources cocoa through intermediaries (for example, traders and aggregators) and only has access to country-level or regional averages rather than farm-level data.
Purchased cocoa beans represent around 80% of GCB’s total footprint. Yet, current systems cannot pinpoint exact sources within this category. At the same time, GCB’s customers, including global retailers and chocolate makers, are requesting for granular, product-level carbon data.
Therefore, GCB seeks a dynamic in-house carbon accounting tool that can provide granular, transparent, and frequent reporting specifically tailored to different cocoa value chains.
How might we develop a dynamic in-house carbon accounting tool for cocoa that delivers real-time, product-level insights across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions?
Requirements
Technical Requirements:
- Automate data collection from multiple sources in varied formats, including suppliers’ self-reporting and automated capture via (ideally) APIs for data uploading.
- Enable built-in capability for emission factor customisation, allowing GCB to insert or update its own EF database when available, while remaining compatible with existing commercial datasets.
- Provide dashboards with analytics, visualisation, and scenario modelling.
- Ensure transparency and auditability across all data points for GHG assurance.
- Cover Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, with attribution across farm, factory, and product stages.
- Be scalable for direct and indirect supply chains:
- Direct supply chain: The system should be able to integrate high-resolution farm data (from local cooperatives or first aggregators).
- Indirect supply chain: The system must still be able to process and account for these broader, less detailed datasets, and reconcile them with the direct supply chain data. Using recognised standard factors / averages for estimates will suffice.
- Must handle multiple reporting frequencies:
- Monthly for commodities, fertiliser, waste, water, and energy
- Quarterly for transportation and distribution
- Annually for refrigerant, vehicles, commuting, leased assets, capital goods, and non-commodity purchases
Performance Requirements:
- Move from annual or biennial updates to monthly or quarterly tracking.
- Must support auditability through anomaly detection and quarterly verification by the GCB Sustainability team, with final dataset locking to prevent further edits.
- Disaggregate emissions to identify hotspots such as cocoa bean sourcing, transport, or fertiliser use.
- Generate product-level carbon footprints, aligned with customer and buyer reporting needs.
- Support scenario modelling to guide decarbonisation strategy (for example, the impact of different sourcing or farming practices.
- Strengthen GCB’s climate strategy and readiness for SBTi alignment by 2027.
Who Should Apply:
- Solution providers within the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) range of 7 to 9, with expertise in carbon accounting tools, GHG inventory systems, or sustainability analytics
- TRL 9 is strongly preferred, as this best aligns with GCB’s operational needs and implementation timeline.
Potential Sustainability Impact:
- Identification of hotspots across the cocoa value chain (beans account for 80% of footprint) and enable targeted decarbonisation
- Reduction of reliance on external service providers, cut manual data handling, and enable more frequent reporting
- Enhanced transparency and credibility with buyers demanding product-level carbon data
POC / Pilot & Incentives
Expected POC / Pilot & Timeline:
- Dashboard ideally ready by September 2026
- The POC / pilot will focus on the Cote D’Ivoire direct supply chain.
- The POC / pilot should demonstrate:
- Automation of multi-source data ingestion
- Disaggregation of cocoa bean emissions
- Customisable emission factors
- Frequent (monthly / quarterly) reporting dashboards
- The POC / pilot should demonstrate: 15% data automated (equivalent to the total monthly submitted data); and 100% cocoa beans in the reporting period that were sourced from Cote D’Ivoire. 95% of GCB’s existing Emission Factor database can be uploaded into the backend system, with flexibility for additional manual insertions as needed.
POC / Pilot Funding:
- GCB will provide milestone-based POC / pilot funding of up to US$15,000 or approximately S$20,000. If the POC / pilot is successful, the solution would be supported by a development and deployment budget of up to US$50,000 inclusive of the POC funding.
- Enterprise Singapore is augmenting this support with a POC development grant of up to S$20,000 for eligible startups / SMEs. Foreign startups / SMEs may be considered if developmental activities are based in Singapore and only if a Singapore office is incorporated. The POC Development grant could also be awarded to startups / SMEs incorporated in Singapore for projects with overseas pilot deployment potential.
POC / Pilot Support:
- Access to existing emissions data and supply chain maps
- Engagement with GCB’s cocoa sustainability team for testing and validation
Further Opportunities:
- Also, a successful solution could be replicated in other agriculture and agro-commodity sectors, extending its impact beyond cocoa.
Info Session
Check out the recording from our Info Session, where Lidl & Kaufland Asia shared more about their challenge statement.
RESOURCES
Info Session Recording
Revisit the detailed presentation on this challenge statement from our virtual Info Session.
Next Steps
Still have questions?
- Write to us at info@padang.co with any questions.
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