Siblings Raiz the Bar with Hong Kong's first bean-to-bar chocolate factory

Hong Kong has no shortage of outlets to buy chocolate - from mass-produced bars on supermarket shelves to jewel-like bonbons in speciality chocolatiers. The quality of chocolate sold in these places could not be more different, but they have one thing in common - they're all imported.

Transforming the seeds (also known as beans) of a fresh cacao pod into edible bars of chocolate is a slow, labour-intensive process. Every chocolate maker in Hong Kong used to import large blocks of ready-made high quality couverture chocolate, which they then melt, flavour and mould because no company in the city was willing to make it from scratch. That has changed, however, with the recent opening of Raiz the Bar, Hong Kong's first bean-to-bar chocolate factory.

Behind the company are sisters Priscilla Soligo and Rachel Whitfield. They source cacao beans directly from an organic farm in Indonesia, work with the growers to ferment and dry the beans, then ship them to Hong Kong whole. This close relationship they have with the growers is at odds with the more conventional method of going through a broker.

Making chocolate in Hong Kong might seem rather counter-intuitive, given our long, steamy summers.

"Having the constant wrath of Hong Kong's humidity and heat for most of the year has certainly been a challenge - but one that we have thankfully overcome in our factory. Keeping the factory dry, consistently watching the temperature and ensuring we temper our chocolate correctly has been our saving grace," Soligo says.