Solomons Gold

Clive Carroll went to the Solomon Islands on holiday in 2004, and he never really left. When he came across a group of run-down cacao plantations, something clicked – with agriculture in his DNA from his father's avocado farming background, he couldn't walk away. Clive established a cacao buying, processing and export business called C-Corp, and spent the following years working closely with village growers across Guadalcanal and beyond – providing technical advice, financial support, and building relationships that now span over 100 farmer groups and communities.

The other half of the Solomons Gold story is Glenn Yeatman, a fourth-generation coffee farmer from Zimbabwe who fled the Mugabe regime with his young family and arrived in New Zealand with little more than a suitcase. Glenn's agricultural background brought him to Clive's attention, and after two years living and working in the Solomon Islands alongside local cacao growers, the pair realised they had something extraordinary on their hands. Glenn relocated to Mount Maunganui and built a chocolate factory largely from scratch – designing much of the equipment himself – to turn those exceptional Solomon Islands beans into Solomons Gold chocolate. It is, above all else, a story of two remarkable people who found something worth building – and built it from scratch.