Chocolate that doesn't melt in your hands when it gets hot

New York

GROWING up, Frederic Depypere didn't fret much about messy chocolate. In rainy Belgium, the temperature rarely got high enough to melt a candy bar. But on a visit to steamy Shanghai five years ago, he realised that the chocolate swag from Belgium's pavilion at the World Expo would quickly turn into mush.

"I thought if we want to bring a product to countries like China or India, we need to change something," said Mr Depypere, a research and development manager at Barry Callebaut AG, the world's leading maker of bulk chocolate.