A PNG company is planning to go into chocolate making in a big way, with plans to export the product.
Paradise Foods has been making biscuits, snacks and ice cream for the past eighty years.
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It also has an experimental chocolate plant which has been operating in Port Moresby for several years.
The chief executive, James Rice, said they want to build a much larger plant in Lae that could employ up to 75 people and produce up to 200 tonnes of chocolate a month.
The company was aiming to export for the first time and it already had overseas interest, according to Rice.
He said PNG was well known within the chocolate industry for its good quality cocoa beans.
"We have talked to a lot of boutique chocolate manufacturers, chocolatiers in jobs in Europe and North America, and they are very interested in what we have and the very unique (product) that we have," he said.