'Price of chocolate has gone through the roof'

"The price of chocolate has gone through the roof... and it's really hard to manage," the founder of an online bakery has said.

Katie Cross, who runs Cake or Death from her shop in Exeter, Devon, said she was now paying £9,000 more per tonne of chocolate than she did a year ago.

In the last 12 months the wholesale price of cocoa has seen a four-fold increase, creating a challenging time for small businesses.

Climate change was said to be one of the factors affecting cocoa harvests in West Africa as lower supply saw prices rise.

Prices peaked on the London Cocoa Futures in April at £9,648 a tonne.

As a smaller purchaser, Ms Cross said she was unable to access the cheaper wholesale rates.

"In 2023 we were paying about £5,500 a tonne and by the end of June we were needing to pay almost £15,000 a tonne, which is obviously a massive increase," she said.

As a result, Ms Cross said she would have to stop buying chocolate in bulk to save pressure on her firm's cash flow.

She has also started producing non-chocolate products like flapjacks and said she put her prices up a "little bit" at the start of the year.

"I really don't want to put prices up again," she said.

"We are selling a luxury product and the prices are fair as they are and I think that customers are really under pressure at the moment with bills so I am just looking at cost savings I can make elsewhere in the business."

Cocoa prices have been driven up by poor harvests in West Africa, which produces the bulk of global supply.

The El Niño weather phenomenon has been causing drier weather in Ghana and Ivory Coast, which are the world's two biggest producers of cocoa beans.

"We've seen a four-fold increase in the price of cocoa in the wholesale market recently," said Prof Dan Bebber, from the University of Exeter.

"We've seen this heating and drying trend and that may lead us to think that actually climate change is driving these increasing prices by reducing the yields of cocoa.

"As with all food commodities, if more people want the commodity and there's less available, the price will go up and obviously the world has an insatiable demand for chocolate."

Cornwall chocolatier Josh Parker said the price instability had forced him to pause a planned investment in his business.

"With the volatility of the cocoa commodity prices, we felt as a business it wasn't the right time to be making those kind of investments with the uncertainty that was surrounding the market," he explained.

The founder of Josh’s Chocolate, based at Callestick Farm near Truro, said he had seen cocoa prices steadily increase since Covid but 2024 had been the biggest jump.

"This year we've seen a real pressure and spike," Mr Parker said.

"Some of our purchase lines are up between two and threefold, 190-200% up on the same time last year."

Although prices have fallen since April, Ms Cross said they were yet to see any savings.

"We understand wholesale prices are coming down but we haven’t seen a decrease in the price we are paying at all," she said.

"In fact, we are being told to feel grateful it isn’t going up again."

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