In September 2024, we travelled to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands to visit Agnes Pilopaso at her cocoa farm — a journey that took us to one of the most remarkable origin stories in our chocolate making. What we found was not just exceptional cacao, but a woman whose determination, entrepreneurship, and commitment to her community has shaped an entire region's relationship with cocoa.
The Solomon Islands: An Unlikely Chocolate Origin
The Solomon Islands sit in the South Pacific, northeast of Australia — a archipelago of volcanic islands, dense rainforest, and extraordinary biodiversity. Guadalcanal, the largest island, is better known in history for the fierce battles fought there during the Second World War. But in the valleys and hillsides of Central Guadalcanal, something quieter and more enduring has been taking root: a cocoa farming tradition that, at its best, produces beans of remarkable quality.
Cacao thrives in the humid, tropical conditions of Guadalcanal. Grown in the shade of the island's forest canopy, the beans develop slowly, absorbing the character of the soil, the rainfall, and the particular microclimate of the island. It is the kind of terroir — to borrow the language of wine — that produces cacao with genuine complexity and distinction.
Agnes Pilopaso and the Tupughotua Cocoa Plantation
Agnes Pilopaso is the owner of the Pilopaso Chocolate Haus and Farm. She built her business from the ground up — beginning by selling dried and wet cocoa beans to local exporters, and growing steadily through skill, persistence, and an instinct for quality.
Her first major breakthrough came in 2015, when the Central Bank of Solomon Islands recognised her entrepreneurship with a Women in Business Award. A year later, in 2016, she won an award at the Solomon Islands Cocoa and Chocolate Festival — SolChoc — which enabled her to acquire processing equipment and expand her operation. By the time we visited, TCP employed over 30 local people, both women and men, and had built supply relationships with niche markets in Samoa and New Zealand.
What makes Agnes's story particularly striking is who she brought with her. The majority of the farmers who collaborated with her to form TCP are women — rural women from Central Guadalcanal who, through Agnes's leadership, have found a meaningful route into economic life. TCP doesn't just produce cocoa beans; it produces cocoa powder, cocoa soap, chocolate, cocoa nibs for cooking and baking, and cocoa tea for local markets. Agnes has built not just a farm, but a small cocoa economy.
Covid, Resilience, and Revival
Like so many small producers around the world, Agnes's business was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. The international market connections she had built — to Samoa, to New Zealand, to niche buyers who valued her quality — were severed almost overnight. TCP scaled back its operations significantly.
But Agnes did not walk away. By 2022, the Central Guadalcanal Constituency office had begun talks with TCP about reviving the business, with support potentially available through the Constituency Development Fund. The commitment on both sides was clear: this was a business worth saving, and a community worth investing in.
When we arrived in September 2024, we found a farm in the process of rebuilding — and a farmer whose belief in what she had created had never wavered.
What We Found on the Farm
Visiting a cocoa farm is a grounding experience for any chocolate maker. It is one thing to understand the process intellectually — fermentation, drying, roasting, winnowing — and quite another to stand among the cacao trees, to hold a freshly split pod, to smell the sweet, almost floral scent of the white pulp surrounding the raw beans.
At Agnes's farm in Guadalcanal, that connection felt especially vivid. The care she and her team bring to the harvest and post-harvest process — the fermentation, the careful drying of the beans — is evident in the quality of what arrives at our manufactory in York. Solomon Islands cacao has a character all of its own: rich and full-bodied, with a depth that reflects the volcanic soils and tropical growing conditions of the island.
It is the kind of cacao that reminds you why origin matters — why the same species of plant, grown in a different place by different hands, can produce something entirely distinct.
Why This Relationship Matters to Us
At York Cocoa Works, we believe that great chocolate begins long before it reaches our roaster. It begins with the farmer — with the decisions made at harvest, the care taken during fermentation, the knowledge passed between growers. Working with producers like Agnes means we can trace every bar back to its source, and tell a story that is true.
It also means that when you buy our Solomon Islands chocolate, you are part of something larger. You are supporting a woman-led cooperative on the other side of the world that is rebuilding after a global crisis, empowering rural farmers in Central Guadalcanal, and keeping alive a cocoa tradition that deserves to thrive.
We are proud to work with Agnes. And we look forward to many more harvests from Guadalcanal.
Curious about how we turn Agnes's beans into chocolate? Follow the journey in our Chocolate Making Process pages, or visit us for a Manufactory Tasting Journey to taste the difference that origin makes.
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