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Wilfred Ng
An engineer joined his father's 44-year-old chocolate factory and saw what machines couldn't fix—farmers earning poverty wages while global brands profited from their labor. His solution pays them triple market rates and won Malaysia's first-ever international chocolate awards.
Transformation Arc
Wilfred Ng trained as a mechanical engineer at Monash University, not a chocolatier. But when he joined his father’s 44-year-old chocolate factory in 2001, he saw what machines couldn’t fix: a broken supply chain where farmers barely survived while global brands profited from their labor.
The engineer’s inheritance #
For fifteen years, Wilfred operated within the commodity chocolate model his father Ng Tuck Ming had built since 1973. The business worked—Benns Chocolate Factory had survived the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis, relocated from Singapore to Malaysia, and built steady commercial operations from their Cheras facility.
But commodity chocolate margins were tightening. More critically, Wilfred couldn’t ignore the systemic injustice underlying the industry. “For the past 40 years, cacao beans have been one of the most undervalued commodities,” he would later explain. “With up to 70 per cent of cacao supplied from West Africa, farmers have long endured poor compensation for their labour, leading to dismal living conditions, slavery, and child labour issues.”
The transformation began when he observed the bean-to-bar movement spreading from America to Japan around 2015-2016. Where others saw a niche trend, Wilfred recognized a vehicle for addressing supply chain ethics at scale.
Moving beyond flavor #
In 2017, Wilfred founded Benns Ethicoa—a wordplay combining “ethical” and “cocoa”—as a premium sub-brand. The pivot was audacious: transforming a 44-year commercial enterprise into a craft chocolate maker when only one in ten Malaysians knew chocolate came from fruit.
His engineering mindset shaped the approach. “We were a commercial chocolate maker from the start,” Wilfred explains. “Many bean-to-bar makers just focus on developing flavours but we think the bean-to-bar concept encompasses more values than just chocolate making. We wanted our chocolate brand to be not only known for their flavours but also other good attributes. We call it Moving Beyond Flavor.”
The December 2019 opening of Asia’s first open-concept bean-to-bar factory made this philosophy tangible. Visitors could observe every production stage while learning about farmer partners through integrated displays. Manufacturing became education.
Transparency as competitive advantage #
Most bean-to-bar makers claim ethical sourcing while buying through traders who obscure farmer compensation. Wilfred’s direct trade model eliminates this ambiguity. Benns pays farmers up to three times market price—approximately US$6-9 per kilogram versus the global standard of US$2-3—based on bean quality and farming practices.
“Most bean-to-bar makers have claimed they are doing good to the farmers but they buy beans from traders and may not even know exactly how much farmers are getting,” Wilfred argues. “In Benns Ethicoa, we practice direct trade. All beans are bought directly from farmers and we ensure our farmers receive a fair price for their beans.”
The transparency extends to public accountability: Benns publishes cocoa prices on Instagram and names all farmer partners across five Asian countries. This radical openness has become a competitive differentiator in an industry built on supply chain opacity.
From craft to commercial scale #
COVID-19 nearly destroyed the factory tour model that anchored consumer education. But the pandemic pivot to e-commerce preserved momentum. By late 2020, Benns Ethicoa became the first Malaysian company to win International Chocolate Awards medals—validation that Southeast Asian cacao could compete globally.
The 100 percent post-pandemic recovery in 2022, with continued 15-20 percent profit growth projected, proved the model’s resilience. But Wilfred’s ambitions extend beyond craft markets.
“It’s not only about craft chocolate,” he acknowledges. “Craft chocolate markets are small. We believe that to effectively promote and sustain cacao farms in Malaysia is to turn them into healthier cocoa ingredients for mass commercial use. We are in the process of doing that.”
The 2023 launch of an affordable all-Malaysian origin line, developed with the Malaysian Cocoa Board, represents this democratization strategy—bringing direct-trade principles to mass market price points while reviving a cacao industry that collapsed 99.9 percent from its 1989 peak.
Ng Tuck Ming, now in his nineties, still walks the factory floor as Chairman. His son hasn’t merely inherited the business—he’s transformed it into a vehicle for systemic change, proving that second-generation leaders can honor heritage while revolutionizing the model that heritage built.