IN Brief:
- Mars is piloting a Balisto trail mix in Germany using Planet A Foods’ ChoViva cocoa-free chocolate alternative.
- The product is being trialled through Rewe stores from April to October 2026.
- Cocoa volatility is pushing confectionery manufacturers to test alternative ingredients that preserve flavour, texture, and processing performance.
Mars has moved into cocoa-free chocolate alternatives with a Balisto trail mix pilot in Germany, using Planet A Foods’ ChoViva ingredient in a product being tested through Rewe stores from April to October 2026.
The product combines nuts, raisins, and a chocolate-style component made without cocoa. ChoViva is produced from fermented sunflower seeds and has been developed as an alternative for chocolate applications during a period of sustained pressure on cocoa supply, price, and crop resilience.
The pilot gives Mars a controlled route to assess how a cocoa-free ingredient performs inside an established brand family. The test will show how the alternative behaves across sensory expectations, product handling, commercial pricing, shelf life, and repeat manufacturing.
The move sits within a broader industry search for cocoa-risk mitigation. IN Food recently covered Fermtech’s funding to scale Koji Cocoa, a fermentation-derived ingredient made from cocoa side streams. It has also reported on Barry Callebaut’s profit pressure, where cocoa-market instability and weaker volumes have exposed strain across the sector.
Cocoa-free systems face a demanding technical path. Chocolate is not only flavour. It is texture, melt, colour, mouthfeel, fat behaviour, processing performance, and regulatory identity. Any alternative must work through mixing, forming, coating, filling, storage, distribution, and shelf-life conditions without creating defects or slowing line performance.
The Balisto pilot brings cocoa-free formulation into a mainstream branded product environment. Alternative cocoa ingredients will only influence the wider confectionery market if they can move from development kitchens into products that can be manufactured, shipped, priced, and repeated at commercial scale.
For Planet A Foods, the collaboration strengthens the commercial case for ChoViva beyond early-stage innovation. Large-brand adoption creates a sharper test of supply reliability, ingredient specification, and application performance across real product formats.
Confectionery manufacturers are no longer treating cocoa volatility as a temporary procurement problem. Reformulation, side-stream valorisation, fermented alternatives, and cocoa-free systems are developing in parallel. Not every route will scale, and some products will resist substitution because the sensory and processing demands are too high. The pressure on conventional cocoa has still become strong enough to make alternative formulation part of long-term manufacturing planning.
