A Reading master's student has made Britain's first all-home-grown chocolate bar since 1932, using cocoa raised in the University's Berkshire glasshouses.

A chocolate bar made entirely from British ingredients has been produced in Reading, the first since 1932, and the cocoa in it was grown in Berkshire.

The University of Reading has named it the Reading 100 Chocolate Bar, marking the university’s hundredth anniversary this year. It was made by Maha Khan, a food security master’s student, who harvested, fermented and processed the cocoa herself before turning it into chocolate in the university’s Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences.

“It has been amazing to follow the entire chocolate-making process, from pod to bean to bar, without leaving Reading,” she said.

The Berkshire glasshouse behind it

The cocoa came from the University of Reading’s International Cocoa Quarantine Centre, which is the part of this story most people in the town will not have heard of. The centre holds a collection of more than 300 types of cocoa plant and, according to the university, handles 97% of the world’s international movement of cocoa plants.

It works as a sort of customs post for cocoa genetics. Plant material moving between cocoa-growing regions passes through the climate-controlled centre in Berkshire, which is managed to stop pests and diseases travelling with it, and researchers get to study the collection while it is there. The cocoa plants growing at the Eden Project in Cornwall were also sourced via Reading.

The pods used for this bar would otherwise have gone to waste. The university says pods from the centre’s collection are normally removed unused; these were kept and used as the source of the beans instead.

Pod to bar

Diagram of the six stages used to make the Reading 100 chocolate bar: split the pods, ferment the beans, dry them in the sun, roast, grind to powder, and mix with British sugar and milk
How the Reading 100 bar was made, from the University of Reading's account of the process. Graphic by Reading Daily.

The pods were split open and the beans removed, fermented, spread out and dried in the sun, then roasted. Using industry-standard equipment and with support from food science staff, Khan crushed and ground the beans into a cocoa powder of consistent texture, combined it with British-grown sugar and milk, then heated, shaped and formed the mixture into a finished bar.

The result joins a very short list. The first documented all-British chocolate was made in 1932, when Rowntree’s used cocoa from a glasshouse-grown plant at its York headquarters to make a bar for the six-year-old Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, making her the first person to eat one. More recently the Cornish craft maker Chocolarder produced chocolate from cocoa grown at the Eden Project.

The point being made

The bar is a centenary piece, but the university is using it to make an argument about food supply rather than about local produce.

The UK chocolate market is worth £10.4 billion and relies entirely on imported cocoa. “Cocoa plants are very sensitive to changes in temperature and rainfall, and climate change is already causing problems in countries that produce most of the world’s cocoa,” Khan said. “Protecting different varieties is vital if farmers need hardier plants that can cope with a changing climate.”

Professor Carol Wagstaff, director of AgriFood Futures at the university, put the case for the imports rather than against them. “The UK chocolate industry rests on a supply chain that starts thousands of miles away in the tropics of Africa, South America and Asia,” she said. “A resilient global market is crucial to the many smallholder farmers who underpin the industry and find themselves farming in some of the regions most exposed to risks from climate change, as well as to chocolate makers and chocolate lovers in the UK.”

She added: “While growing and buying local produce often makes sense for your health, and helps the economy and environment, it is not a universal rule.”

What it means for you

You cannot buy one. The university describes the Reading 100 as an exclusive bar made to mark the anniversary, and its announcement says nothing about production beyond that. Khan was the first person to eat it.

Reading grows the world’s cocoa collection, quietly. The quarantine centre is a working research facility rather than a visitor attraction, and the university has not announced public access to it. It is worth knowing it is there: almost every cocoa plant that crosses an international border does so via Berkshire.

The centenary runs all year. The university is marking its hundredth anniversary throughout 2026. If you are looking for things to do in the town in the meantime, our guide to things to do in Reading has the current list.

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