2024 is moving on apace and we are already thinking about Mother’s Day and Easter. If any of you have been worried by the news in the national press about shortage of tea in some supermarkets but there’s no need to worry as we have plenty and our regular scheduled delivery of stocks are all arriving as planned!
Although we don’t sell a lot of chocolate powder and cocoa via our website, we pack for four well known fine quality national brands. Cocoa costs have been steadily rising throughout the last quarter of 2023 and in the last two weeks, based on reduced crop yield, unfavourable weather conditions and reports of ‘cacao swollen shoot virus’ in both Ivory Coast and Ghana (two of the main Cocoa producing African nations), we have seen Cocoa prices reach their highest since records began! Cocoa bean prices, (the raw material from which cocoa powder and cocoa butter are made) which in April 2023 were around $2800 per metric tonne, had increased to $4400 per metric tonne by the end of January 2024 and in the last four weeks have doubled again. This means that if the market stays at this extraordinary high rate for the next few months that we will see these increases find their way through to chocolate bars, hot chocolate drinks and cocoa powder. This is further exacerbated by very high freight costs due to the Red Sea / Suez crisis and these prices if prolonged will mean that we see the end of ‘cheap’ chocolate for the foreseeable future.
