Easter chocolate this year may make you dip into your nest egg (Picture: Getty)
This year’s Easter holidays could be a lot more expensive as the price of cocoa has soared more than 50% in one month.
One tonne of cocoa is now worth more than £7,100 as farmers battle poor harvest, crop disease and drought.
The price of the key ingredient in chocolate has now doubled since early 2024, forcing major sweets companies to look for other options during the Easter holiday season.
Some companies have decided to push alternative ingredient sweets with other flavours to make up for the lost cocoa product.
Hershey’s and Nestle are among the businesses that have been forced to reckon with the skyrocketing prices of sweets.
And experts have warned that prices will continue to climb into next year.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Diana Gomes said: ‘Chocolate may be even more expensive in Easter 2025, if cocoa-tree diseases and inclement weather prolong the deficit amid high sugar prices.’
Part of the issue facing cocoa farmers has been El Nino, a weather pattern which brought drought, heavy rain and high temperatures to west African cocoa farms.
The Easter favourite could cost even more next year (Picture: Getty)
Wetness affected production in West Africa, while heat and dryness plagued the Ivory Coast and Ghana.
In December, Cadbury was unable to put some orange candies in their rose tubs due to supply chain issues.
Consumers noticed the increased prices of their favourite treats in December last year, when the prices of chocolate had increased 15.3%.
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At Asda, Green & Black’s Organic Classic Miniature Chocolate Bar Collection, 180g went from £3.59 on average in the three months to the end of November 2022 to £6 on average in the same period in 2023– an increase of 67.2%.
Nestle’s Black Magic 348g and Dairy Box Medium Chocolate Box 326g were both £3.35 on average at Asda in the three months to the end of November 2022, but rose 56.6% to an average of £5.25 in 2023.
British Retail Consortium economist Harvir Dhillon previously said: ‘Chocolate has been hard hit by soaring global cocoa prices, which have almost doubled over the last year, reaching a 46-year high. The cost of cocoa has been badly affected by poor harvests in parts of Africa.’
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