Never "too small" to finance

When Gricha Safarian first arrived in Vietnam in 1993, the idea of building a chocolate business there bordered on the unthinkable. The country was still emerging from decades of conflict, extreme poverty affected the majority of the population, and Vietnam remained under a US embargo. Any serious market study would have advised him to “run away as fast as possible.”

Yet Safarian stayed.

“I felt something special, something different,” he recalls. “Despite everything, I felt comfortable with the vibes of the country. I knew I wanted to build something here.”

More than three decades later, that intuition has grown into Puratos Grand Place, Vietnam’s leading B2B chocolate producer and a pioneer in vertically integrated cocoa production. At the heart of this journey lies a long-standing partnership with BIO, whose early support proved decisive in shaping the company’s future.

Building a Business Where No One Else Was Looking

For years, progress was slow and resources limited. It wasn’t until 2001 that his company opened its first chocolate factory, producing industrial B2B chocolate for the Vietnamese market with one clear ambition: replace imported chocolate with locally made alternatives and keep value creation inside the country.

The model worked. Demand grew. But by 2006, the factory had reached its limits.

He was looking for approximately €650,000—too small for international funds and development banks, yet too large for local Vietnamese banks at the time, which were reluctant to finance foreign-owned businesses.

“It was a dead end,” he says. “Until someone told me about a Belgian organisation called BIO.”

BIO provided the loan, but the impact went far beyond the amount itself. The financing came with a grace period, flexibility on guarantees, and access to subsidies for market studies—elements that were crucial at a fragile stage of growth.

“That loan allowed us to build the factory, buy the machines, and move forward,” he says. “And I always say this very clearly: without that loan from BIO, nothing you see today would exist.”

At the time, this approach was almost unheard of. “In most cocoa-producing countries, beans are bought cheap and all the value is extracted elsewhere,” he explains. “In that model, countries like Vietnam get almost nothing.”

Puratos Grand Place chose a different path:

• Cocoa grown locally
• Beans processed and transformed locally
• Investment, skills, and value creation remaining in the country

Today, around 80% of production serves the Vietnamese market, while exports generate additional foreign revenue. But the model came with a major obstacle: the taste of Vietnamese cocoa beans.

“They were acidic, vinegary—in other words : unusable,” Safarian remembers. “We had to choose: abandon vertical integration or reinvent fermentation.”

They chose reinvention. Inspired by the wine industry, Safarian and his team developed a new cocoa fermentation methodology using wooden boxes, an innovation that significantly improved flavour profiles and redefined part of the cocoa supply chain.

“Fermentation defines up to 35% of a chocolate’s final flavour,” he says. “And yet, the industry had ignored it. We realised we were sitting on a gold mine.”

Joining Forces with Puratos—and Returning to BIO

To unlock the full potential of this innovation, Safarian knew he needed a strategic partner. That partner came in the form of Puratos Group, the Belgian food ingredients company with deep expertise in fermentation.

The result was a joint venture and the creation of Puratos Grand Place, supported by a major investment in a cocoa roasting and grinding line worth around USD 3 million. Despite having alternative financing options, Safarian insisted on bringing BIO back into the picture.

“I wanted BIO involved again,” he says. “Not just for the financing, but because they truly understand development and long-term impact.” BIO supported the second investment phase around 2016–2017. Today, the facility processes 2,000 tonnes of cocoa beans per year, combining industrial scale with continuous research and development.

Rather than seeing this as a constraint, Puratos Grand Place embraced it. The company created a dedicated sustainability function, formalised ESG policies, and began actively monitoring environmental and social performance.

“It helped us structure the organisation and prepare for the joint venture with Puratos,” Safarian reflects. “Today, financial KPIs and higher-purpose KPIs are treated at the same level.”

He estimates that 50–60% of the company’s sustainability maturity can be traced back to its journey with BIO.

Looking Ahead

Vietnam’s economy is growing rapidly, and Puratos Grand Place has been the undisputed leader in B2B chocolate since 2001, with a market share of around 65%. The challenge now is not demand, but capacity.

“Our factories are reaching their limits,” Safarian says. “Within the next few years, we’ll need to build a new, centralised facility that can support growth until at least 2040.”

It will be a major investment—and potentially a new chapter in a partnership that has already lasted decades.