The detail with which he speaks about farming techniques and cocoa beans – even to cracking them open with a cocoa guillotine – would make anyone think he is a man who grew up in the cocoa business.

But the bespectacled Kim, who is from Cheorwon, South Korea, a district close to the border of North Korea, did not.

Just 12 years ago, the IT and management graduate was working in a commodities trading company in Seoul, where he was tasked with helping Dongguk University with a research project by sourcing for materials.

“The university entered into a joint-venture with my company to develop a product rich in antioxidants derived from either ginseng, coffee, cocoa, wine or tea. I felt a cocoa product would be new as we didn’t produce our own cocoa products.”

Kim did his research on cocoa and sent out emails to cocoa companies everywhere to source for the beans, but only the Tawau-based conglomerate Teck Guan responded.

That reply would prove to be life-changing, as Kim quickly fell in love with Tawau and its people. While the project ultimately didn’t work out, his trips to Sabah left quite an impression on him.

He quit his job and moved to Tawau two years later to start his own cocoa business, which he began by exporting cocoa powder to Korean hypermarkets.

“Ever since I learned about cocoa, I had always wanted to make my own chocolates but without preservatives or chemicals.”

A cocoa seminar he attended would give him the impetus to do so. There, he learned about the bean-to-bar concept, which he says is similar to the farm-to-table idea.

“The idea is to buy directly from cocoa farmers without going through middlemen. This way, we can ensure that the farmers get better prices and we get the best quality beans.

“Usually, for commercial chocolates, what happens is that companies buy lower quality beans as they are cheaper. This means users get lower quality end products.”

This, he says, is a shame, more so since the “good earth” in Sabah produces the best quality cocoa beans in the world.

“Cocoa beans from Sabah contain over 55% cocoa butter. A higher cocoa butter content means higher quality. South American cocoa contains less than 50% cocoa butter.”

Along the way, Kim met some people in Korea who shared his view about chocolates and in 2018, Bonaterra, which means “good earth” in Italian, was born in Kota Kinabalu.

“Ten years ago, many Sabahans helped me to settle in. Now I want to pay them back. I’m not rich but I know a bit about chocolate and have some friends who are investors.

“So I want to bring this together and help local farmers, not just from buying their produce but through meeting them and sharing my knowledge on how they can produce better beans.”

Kim spends a lot of time on the road, travelling to cocoa-producing districts such as Kota Marudu, Keningau and Tawau.

Three of the four varieties of chocolate produced by Bonaterra are named after the districts they come from. The fourth is a blend of beans from the three areas, known as the Borneo blend. The dark chocolate, which takes about one month to make and age, contains only cocoa and cane sugar.

Kim also sells cocoa nibs, which are crushed beans often found sprinkled in salads or yoghurt.

Although he runs a small enterprise with only three employees, Kim is dreaming big.

Already, 50% of his chocolates are exported to Korea and Singapore, and plans are in the pipeline to export them to Japan, the US and the Netherlands.

“Locally, they can be bought at our factory and anyone who comes here can come for a tour of the factory, too.”

He says there is real potential to develop Sabah’s cocoa industry, but that farmers, particularly smallholders, need more help in terms of equipment and education.

“If we give them an overview of the global market’s demands, and the importance of high quality beans, we could encourage them to improve and invest more in planting,” he says, adding that this is especially the case as specialty chocolates are gaining popularity around the world.

“One day, I hope to open a Bonaterra cocoa cafe for the people to enjoy and learn, and I hope that when people think of Sabah, they think of real chocolate.”