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For cocoa & chocolate importers
EUDR for the cocoa and chocolate you bring into Europe.
Bring cocoa beans, butter or finished chocolate into the EU from outside it and you’re the operator: the party the Deforestation Regulation asks to prove the cocoa isn’t tied to forest cleared after 2020, and to file the statement that says so. Most of that cocoa comes from West African farms grown under shade, which is exactly where a naïve check goes wrong. We carry the work, with a method built for how cocoa really grows.
What the regulation asks of you
Three things every cocoa operator has to produce.
Geolocation of every producer plot.
For each farm where your cocoa was grown, you need coordinates (polygons, or a point with area for plots up to four hectares) down to six decimal places, tracing back to the 31 December 2020 cut-off. A single container can carry beans aggregated from hundreds of smallholder farms across Côte d’Ivoire or Ghana, and every one has to be located.
Due diligence that the land wasn’t deforested.
You must show that none of those farms sat on forest converted to agriculture after the cut-off date. That means reading each plot against real forest-monitoring data and recording how you reached the conclusion: a written determination, not an assurance from a supplier.
A Due Diligence Statement filed in TRACES.
Before the cocoa or chocolate is placed on the EU market, a DDS goes into the EU’s TRACES system, which returns a reference number and a verification number your customers and the authorities may request. The records behind it have to be kept for five years.
A note that trips people up: the simplified, address-only declaration introduced in 2025 is for small primary operators placing their own produce, in low-risk countries. As an EU importer of someone else’s cocoa you’re not a primary operator, so you still file the full statement with plot geolocation, whatever the origin country’s risk class.
Why agroforestry cocoa is different
Shade-grown cocoa can look like forest to one map.
Across West Africa, cocoa is often grown in agroforestry systems: cocoa trees interplanted with taller shade trees that shelter the crop and hold the soil. That mixed canopy is a working farm, not standing forest. But it reads as dense tree cover, and when the shade trees are pruned, thinned or renewed, a single satellite map sees the cover drop and calls it loss.
Run one map and auto-flag, and a legitimate agroforestry farm ends up rejected: a false alarm that stalls a shipment and buries you in disputes with a cooperative. So we cross-read several authoritative sources instead of one. A 2020 baseline sets the forest line; a change layer shows what moved since; and a third classifies whether the change was true deforestation or the ordinary management of a tree-crop system. Confirmed post-2020 conversion is flagged with the evidence behind it; an agroforestry plot that looks active but was never cleared is surfaced for human review rather than auto-failed.
How we carry it
You send the coordinates. We do the rest.
We file as your Authorised Representative.
With a short written mandate, we act as the EU-established representative the regulation allows to submit on your behalf. Your operator identity and EORI go in the statement, never ours.
We assess and submit.
Every plot is checked with the type-aware method above, then the geolocation and due-diligence record are assembled into your DDS and filed in TRACES. We retrieve the reference number your buyers may request.
You keep a defensible record.
You receive a self-contained bundle (plot geometry, the assessment and the data behind it, and the TRACES reference) sealed together and yours to hold for the five years the regulation requires.
What we provide is documented, defensible due diligence and a clean filing: the kind you can stand behind when a buyer or an auditor asks.
Why prepare now
The clock for smaller importers runs to mid-2027.
As it currently stands, large and medium operators come under the rules from 30 December 2026, and micro and small enterprises from 30 June 2027. If you’re a smaller cocoa or chocolate importer, that later date is yours, and it can feel far off.
It isn’t, in practice. The hard part isn’t the filing; it’s getting coordinates for every farm back through a West African supply chain that runs through cooperatives and exporters you don’t control. Cocoa aggregates heavily, so the geolocation homework is deep. Starting a season or two early turns your first real filing into a rehearsal rather than a scramble. Dates have shifted before and could again, which is exactly why the mapping work starts now, not when the deadline is on top of you.
Get in touch
Tell us about your cocoa.
What you import (beans, butter or chocolate), where it’s sourced, and where you are with plot coordinates: that’s enough for us to show you exactly what your filing would involve.