The Bougainville profile has a fruity note to it.
There's a spicyafter taste to it.
A lot of people enjoy the Bougainville chocolate.
Cocoa is the livelihood of Bougainvilleans and it was a really beautiful place to live and grow up in.
I remember visiting our cocoa plot every weekend.
We left in 1991 at the height of the crisis.
I was 13 years old when we left and we fled to Rabaul.
You know, going back to the good days,
I can really say that it was a very enjoyable childhood that I had growing up in Bougainville, pre-crisis days.
One of my strengths is people.
Fourteen years working in the human resources field felt like I was part of the furniture, I guess.
I decided to do a Masters in Business Administration so I could get skills
in a more broader corporate environment.
The CEO David Peate straight away thought well,
now that you have this additional qualification, you need to put it to use.
The Queen Emma chocolate plant had been identified as a business that Paradise could definitely invest in,
and it needed somebody to run and to manage it.
He has a lot of confidence in Bougainvilleans, 'They know cocoa better than anybody else.'
He said, 'You're the perfect fit for this role.'
'You know cocoa, and you know how to manage people and this is what this role needs.'
We should be proud of what Papua New Guinea can offer.
Not just something that we bag and mix up with somebody else's cocoa beans
but something that we can actually process into our own chocolate.
Generally speaking, not too many people outside of our region
know too much about PNG to be perfectly honest.
People might think of us as a place where things are mined or taken out of the ground.
The population in Papua New Guinea is much larger than any of the other Island States.
Almost by default we take a senior role in the affairs of the Pacific.
The modern Papua New Guinean is an open minded individual.
Somebody who is aware of their surroundings, who is aware of
what's happening in the world, the way that the world is developing nowadays.
The general feeling here in Papua New Guinea is that we do need to broaden our economic base.
Papua New Guinea as a lot of people know is quite diverse in resources so,
to move away from that over-reliance on the extractives is certainly an ambition.
A lot of times they talk about mining, and oil and gas,
but certainly agriculture and cocoa especially is the way to go for PNG,
and that's the backbone of rural Papua New Guineans.
I definitely think we can produce chocolates
or cocoa-based products like cocoa mass,
if we up the grade, make sure our food safety requirements are met
and if they are able to negotiate access for chocolate products into say, Australia or New Zealand,
then yes, we can put out fine flavoured chocolates into the markets.
We do have interest from Australia.
If we can have PNG chocolate in a supermarket, in Australia, that would just be wonderful.
The long history between Australia and PNG, when you look at the Second World War,
the cultural and familial bonds are very strong.
I think there's a certain maturity that's beginning to show, so as we mature as an economy,
the conversation becomes much more of a peer to peer as opposed to a senior to a junior.
The Australian Government's horticulture export program, PHAMA,
has been very helpful to us in terms of market access for our chocolate,
they brought the trade visitors who gave us a lot of insight into our chocolate
and also they've connected us to some of their chocolatiers back in their home countries as well.
We've enjoyed 5 to 10 years of unparalleled growth in the last decade.
The long term desire of business is that more and more Papua New Guineans
participate in what's a thriving economy.
Papua New Guinea is heading towards a new type of development,
a more sustainable, a more inclusive way of development.
It's exciting as a young Papua New Guinean to be involved in such change.
Queen Emma is a good brand name and has a good story,
they're able to work with the farmers, pick out good cocoa,
and give better returns to the farmers.
At the moment we're small, but we expect to really grow within this year and next year and
we're looking at bigger things to come.
Anything's possible with Queen Emma.
She's royalty, so definitely some hidden secrets there.