Easter eggs are more expensive this year and, as you may discover next Sunday, many are also thinner.
That’s because chocolate costs more than it has for half a century. Having climbed gradually for decades, the price of cocoa multiplied by about a factor of five in 18 months, hitting a record of more than £9 per kg late last year.
Ten days ago in west Africa the price of your 2026 Easter eggs was pushed higher still.
Between them Ivory Coast and neighbouring Ghana produce 60 per cent of the world’s cocoa and twice a year each of these countries fixes their cocoa price for the coming harvest, in an effort to ensure farmers receive a stable income.
At a ceremony in Abidjan, the largest city in Ivory Coast, Kobenan Kouassi Adjoumani, the country’s agriculture minister, addressed a live audience and television viewers at home. “I would like to announce to you, on behalf of the president of the republic, that the price of a kilogram of cocoa, well fermented, well ground and well dried, is set at 2,200 CFA francs [about £2.90],” Adjoumani said. It was, he said, a “record price, never equalled”.
A cheer erupted from the crowd but a few of those present kept silent. Perhaps they were envoys from Mars, Nestlé and the other chocolate giants. A few days later Ghana announced that its price will remain unchanged.
The era of cheap chocolate may be ending for good.
According to Which?, the consumer watchdog group, Easter eggs in Britain cost up to 50 per cent more than in 2024. A Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chunky Ultimate Egg 400g now sells at Sainsbury’s for £15.50.
Confectionery giants are now scrambling to save costs, while exploring alternatives including replacing cocoa in their production process. At the same time, a new breed of smaller chocolate-makers is arguing we need to value cocoa more, which means paying for it as we do wine, cheese and olive oil.
The crisis stems from the rising cost of production in west Africa.
Yields have plummeted — last year Ghana’s was half its usual volume. Scientists say climate change is wreaking havoc with the countries’ tropical weather, which provides the humidity and warmth cocoa needs to grow. Mondelez International, which owns Cadbury, warned several years ago that Ivory Coast and Ghana could become unsuitable for cocoa production within 30 years.
“It rains, it doesn’t rain, afterwards it’s hot,” said Axel Emmanuel, 40, one of the few “bean-to-bar” chocolate-makers in Ivory Coast. “The intense heat burns the cocoa nibs. The plant dies … When it only rains, rains, rains the beans won’t dry and they will rot.”
Diseases are also out of control, principally the cacao swollen shoot virus carried by an insect called the mealybug. Farmers have had to destroy hundreds of millions of trees because of it. A new tree takes five years to grow and many have neither the money or will to replant.
Cocoa was originally a slave crop and it remains brutally labour intensive. Child exploitation is widespread within the industry. Despite efforts to stamp it out, an estimated 1.5 million children are still believed to work in cocoa fields in Ivory Coast and Ghana.
Margins are thin. For every £1 chocolate bar sold in the supermarket, the chocolate brand typically receives about 35p, after adding sugar and often milk to beans in factories in the West. The farmer’s share is about 6p.
Most cocoa farmers are now in their fifties at least, with a life expectancy of about 60, typically getting by on about $1 (77p) a day. The future when they die is unclear.
“The children don’t want to work,” said Ange Aboa, an Ivorian filmmaker and cocoa expert. “They prefer to be mechanics, to drive motorcycles, to do other things, but not cocoa. Because they saw the poverty of their parents. They don’t want to be poor for 50 years like their parents.”
Laws including an incoming EU directive that says all cocoa sold in Europe must be sourced to a specific farm are pushing the big multinational players to invest in sustainability programmes, driving up costs.
Everyone I spoke to agreed prices will stay high, if not keep climbing.
That gives the chocolate giants few options. They can continue to raise prices while reducing product sizes. (Mondelez and US giant Hershey even reported higher profit margins than usual last year, because they bought cocoa when it was still cheap and still raised prices.) They can absorb a dent in their profits. Or they can continue to lower the percentage of cocoa in their chocolate, even replacing it completely.
At its simplest, chocolate is cocoa plus sugar. Major brands add fats such as palm oil, flavourings like vanilla, E numbers as emulsifiers and of course milk. Cadbury’s Dairy Milk contains 20 per cent cocoa and 20 per cent milk. Any less of either ingredient and it could not be called milk chocolate in the UK. A range of start-ups have appeared selling cocoa alternatives and cocoa grown in labs. Mondelez has invested in one company, Celleste Bio, that produces cell-cultured cocoa from beans stored in tanks. Lindt has partnered with ChoViva, a German cocoa-free brand, to release a series of limited edition vegan chocolate bars made with oats and sunflower seeds instead of cocoa.
The other option for chocolate manufacturers is to train consumers to pay more for a better product.
Claire Burnett, 57, a former marketing executive, and her accountant husband Andy, 59, set up Chococo in Swanage, Dorset, in 2002 after leaving London.
They work directly with farmers and chocolate-makers in Colombia, Venezuela and Madagascar, developing chocolates of all shades. Instead of 20 per cent cocoa, their milk chocolate contains 49 per cent (a bar costs £5). They know exactly which farm every bean has come from. But Chococo’s 400g Easter eggs sell for £33.50.
“We don’t give chocolate the same respect that we do craft coffee or wines or olive oils or cheeses, and it has been commoditised over the years because of the domination of the big companies who have educated consumers to think of chocolate as a cheap food,” Claire Burnett said. Coffee drinkers increasingly expect to know about the origin of their beans. “But chocolate, there’s this barrier of people thinking about brands,” she added.
Ambroise N’koh, 72, is an Ivorian who has made high-end chocolate pay. He is often described as the country’s master cocoa grower and has collected global awards. World Bank and EU officials often rumble down the track to his 50-hectare farm in fertile flower-covered land north of Abidjan.
“The terroir of cocoa comes from the quality of the soil,” he said, the rich smell of the stuff in the air, and a team of women peeling beans beside him. “If you give me a cocoa bean, I am able, like a sommelier, to tell you the origin of this cocoa.” Mountain cocoa has “a floral sensitivity”, he said. One local region’s has “a strong connotation of astringency”.
N’koh sells his cocoa for £7.80 per kilo, more than double the nationwide fixed price. He can legally do this because the women have treated the beans. His prosperity allows him to protect his crop from the heat and disease, so his yields have stayed high. “We say it is the food of the gods,” he said.
“The flavour of the cocoa here is so good,” Emmanuel, one of N’koh’s clients, kept saying. His company, Le Chocolatier Ivoirien, makes 12 of the three million or so metric tonnes of chocolate the world produces every year. It is a tiny operation, but a small effort to keep more of the value of chocolate in Africa.
