Be careful – this might just ruin your Valentine’s Day

Is chocolate off the menu for Valentine’s Day gifts? And even Easter?

Disease, extreme weather, and, sometimes, government policy in the Ivory Coast and Ghana – which combine for two-thirds of the world’s cocoa supply – are the guilty parties. They are responsible for the price nearly trebling in the past year and repeatedly breaking records.

Chocolatiers have inevitably sought to pass on the increasing costs of their raw material to the consumer. The most recent food price inflation monitor by the consumer group Which? cited the chocolate category as the highest riser. It jumped by 12.4 per cent in the year to November 2024.

Manufacturers have been looking at ways to deal with the issue, including cutting the cocoa content of their products or using a greater proportion of fillings where possible. You may find your favourite fruit and nut bar is more fruit, more nut, and less bar this year.

Then, there is shrinkflation; reducing the size of the product while holding its price point. It is a highly controversial practice in Britain. But you can expect to see more of it, particularly when it comes to the likes of Easter eggs, which are particularly susceptible to the practice because they are only bought once a year.

How much pain the consumer, battered by inflation and a bad economy, will put up with is an open question. Kantar’s latest supermarket survey put food price inflation at 3.3 per cent in January, which is down on the previous month but still painful when one considers that it is cumulative. Needless to say, chocolate isn’t an essential, and even during gifting seasons, there are alternatives available.

There have been signs that consumers are becoming restive. The US confectioner Hershey cited this when it released its third-quarter results which blamed “historically high cocoa prices and a challenging consumer environment” for a fall in sales (and a miss when it came to Wall Street’s expectations).

There is scant sign of any relief on the horizon. Predictions for the year ahead are not rosy when it comes to the availability of cocoa, and thus its price. So volatile has the futures market become that even hedge funds, which make bets on the financial and commodity markets, have started to fight shy.

As the news agency Reuters explained: “In the middle of last year, hedge funds – a class of investors that use privately pooled money to make speculative bets – started pulling back from trading cocoa futures because price swings in the market were raising their cost of trading and making it harder to make profits.”

One cannot ignore the malign impact of climate change in all this, something that is increasingly viewed with concern by chocolate makers. Mondelez, a US multinational with an enviable portfolio of much-loved consumer brands including Cadbury, has an initiative called “Cocoa Life”.

“If the cocoa sector doesn’t take action, current cocoa-producing regions may no longer be viable in the future as a result of climate change,” it warns. The company has also been active in seeking to encourage more farmers to grow the crop. It has skin in the game here, but its point is well-made.

Own-label produce is, as ever, considerably cheaper than brands, which are particularly prevalent in this sector. A 200g bar from Sainsbury’s will set you back £2.50. You would need to spend £2.75 to buy 180g of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

It isn’t inconceivable that chocolate goes from an affordable sweet treat to a luxury item. Some would argue that we’re already there.

It is a bitter pill to swallow for those who love the stuff. If you are planning to stomach the price rises to buy your loved one a Valentine’s gift or an Easter egg, you might have little choice but to give it up for Lent.