Cocoa prices have come off the boil, but Easter shoppers are still paying for last year’s supply shock. Beans are trading far below their 2024 peak, when prices blew past $12,000 a ton, yet a 11.6 percent rise in candy prices shows how slowly commodity relief reaches the checkout line. The chocolate on store shelves was made with cocoa bought near the extremes, so the price drop in raw beans has not reached this spring’s baskets.
The squeeze started with three straight years of bad weather in West Africa, where Ghana and Ivory Coast produce about 60 percent of the world’s cocoa. That left the market with a deep supply deficit and sent prices soaring, prompting price hikes from Hershey, Nestle and Lindt. Lindt lifted prices by 19 percent, and the aftershock is still showing up in holiday candy, even as cocoa supply has improved this year.
David Branch of the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute said better weather, improved farming practices and more plantations coming online in South America and Asia have boosted supply and pushed bean prices down. Even so, he does not expect much consumer relief until Halloween, and possibly only a modest one. In other words, the market is healing, but not fast enough to rescue this season’s chocolate aisle.
The pressure is not only about cocoa. Packaging and energy costs have also pushed up chocolate prices, and food packaging costs remained elevated after tariffs. Chris Taylor, who owns Li-Lac Chocolates, said the combination of cocoa and packaging costs has been “brutal,” and warned further increases may be hard to avoid if the squeeze persists. Consumers may trade down to store brands or shift toward Peeps and jellybeans, but Branch said chocolate still has the edge as an “affordable luxury.”
