Did you catch co-founder Claire on Radio 5's Wake Up to Money on Dec 10th?
If you thought you heard me on the radio on the BBC Radio 5 business programme Wake up to Money at 5.50am on Wednesday 10th December, then you were right! If you have the BBC 'Sounds' app you can hear me talk to Sean Farrington about why chocolate prices have risen in the shops over the past 12 months.
According to the ONS, chocolate prices have risen by c17% (by the way, ours have risen by less than that over this period) and so I explained why - mostly driven by systemic issues in West Africa where the poor harvests over the past few years have resulted in less supply and rocketing cocoa prices since early 2024.
In fact, I spelled out the issue by highlighting the commodity cocoa price over the past 3 Decembers to make the point - in December 2022, the price of cocoa on the New York stock exchange was c$2,300/tonne, in December 2023, it was starting to rise at $4,000/tonne, this time last year in December 2024 it had shot up to a peak of over $12,000/tonne.
Prices have come down since then and are currently around $6,000/tonne which will hopefully become the new normal - the previous $2,300/tonne was not sustainable for cocoa farmers as they were not earning a living wage. This is especially true in Ivory Coast & Ghana which accounts for 60% of world cocoa production where they dont even get paid the market price, they only get their government-run cocoa board 'farmgate' prices which are set at c50% BELOW the market price...no wonder there are so many issues with children working on cocoa farms instead of going to school, slavery, lack of investment in new tree stock etc - the farmers cant afford to invest!
While i am on a rant, there is an additional long term systemetic issue driven by these artifically low prices - young farmers dont want to grow cocoa. Why should they if they are paid so little for their beans? Cocoa farmers are getting older and young farmers would rather grow other crops with a better ROI, or leave farming altogether to head to the cities or in the case of Ghana, try their luck gold mining.
As you may be aware, we operate a very different trade model to the traditional one where the c4 million subsistence cocoa farmers, mostly in West Africa, sell their beans to thousands of middle men who then sell it on to the multinationals known as 'Big Chocolate' to process the beans in the West & add the value there. Transparency & traceability back to farms and farmers is just not there and ensuring that the cocoa beans are slave-free is pretty impossible. Further, sustainability programmes run by Big Chocolate are just tickling the surface - i would argue that the traditional cocoa supply chain model is pretty broken and changes to wet & dry season patterns caused by climate change impacting recent harvests has just accelerated a problem that has been known about for many years.
By contrast, we work with chocolate partners based in their cocoa growing countries and they are making couverture chocolate for us to work with in country of origin in Colombia, Ecuador & Madagascar- this direct trade model keeps more of the value chain in the cocoa growing country and literally raises the value of their trade, as they are exporting a value added product which employs higher skilled labour, creates a whole ecosystem around the production wrt machinery, packaging etc and ultimately higher tax revenues for that country. They also have a vested interest in ensuring the long term viability of growing cocoa in their local countries and all have sustainability programmes working with their partner cocoa farmers. They can also guarantee that the cocoa grown is slave-free.
They then ship the chocolate by sea direct to us in Dorset - in fact, we took delivery of another 10 tonnes of our signature award-winning 72% Ecuador dark chocolate made with Cacao Nacional cocoa beans grown on a single estate, Hacienda Zoilita, just this week. The container was packed at the Martinetti factory in Quevedo 6 weeks ago & arrived at our factory in Dorset on Tuesday - no middlemen taking cuts, no faff, a direct relationship between Ecuador & Dorset - how cool is that!
Click here for a link to the Wake Up to Money episode on the BBC Sounds app