Chocolates with native ingredients developed by Haigh's with Clare Valley Indigenous food promoter Warndu
The chocolate products developed by Haigh's and Warndu. Top right: Damien Coulthard of Warndu with Haigh’s technical and product manager Ben Kolly at Byron Bay. Bottom right: Damien Coulter with the other founder of Warndu, Rebecca Sullivan.
Byron Bay image by Mike Burton
South Australia’s Clare Valley Aboriginal-owned lifestyle and food brand Warndu teamed up with Adelaide’s iconic Haigh’s Chocolates in 2021 to develop products made with Australian native ingredients.
Haigh’s unveiled two 100g chocolate products carrying the Warndu brand: milk chocolate with finger lime and dark chocolate with Davidson plum. The products were developed over two years, overseen by Haigh’s technical and product manager Ben Kolly working worked closely with Damien Coulthard and Rebecca Sullivan who founded Warndu in 2014. Haigh’s and Warndu continued to work on developing how Australian native foods and botanicals could be used with chocolate.
Sullivan said the rainforest fruits, Davidson plums and finger limes, were sourced from farms in the Byron Bay hinterland and then freezedried to be added to chocolate. Warndu was excited to be working with century-old heritage brand Haigh’s who pioneered the Easter chocolate bilby. Haigh’s transparency in sourcing ingredients ethically was also important.
Warndu had a focus on environmental sustainability and believed Australian native foods needed to be in every Australian’s pantry, for the sake of our environment, as well as culture and reconciliation. A Rural Woman of the Year finalist, Sullivan had a master’s degree in climate change and sustainable agriculture and rural development. She was working to set up the climate resilience programme at Clare. It would feature a demonstration garden to show how Indigenous ingredients could be grown locally to help soil health, climate and the environment.
“Hopefully we will create a native food bowl here by getting more farmers to plant native foods — they need to be in our soils from a climate resilience perspective,” Sullivan said. “Our mission was to regenerate culture, community, tradition, health and soil.
