Why chocolate is getting more expensive

Cacao swollen shoot virus has caused sustained losses in West Africa, where most of the world's cacao grows, and there is no treatment once a tree is infected. Black pod disease pressure rises with humidity and rainfall.

Much of the West African tree stock is ageing and past peak productivity. Replanting takes years to bear, so the supply response to a price rise is measured in seasons rather than months.

Weather disruption has compounded both. And because cacao is a perennial tree crop grown overwhelmingly by smallholders, none of these can be answered quickly by planting more.

Three consequences, and all three are visible if you look.

Smaller bars at the same price — the standard response to input cost rises in confectionery, because a price increase is more noticeable than a size reduction.

More vegetable fat. EU rules permit up to 5% cocoa butter equivalents with mandatory declaration, and that declaration appears more often when cocoa butter prices rise.

And lower cocoa content within a category. A milk chocolate can legally sit at 25% cocoa solids in the EU, and formulations drift toward the floor when the input is expensive.

The gap between mass-market and craft chocolate has narrowed in relative terms, because craft makers were already paying multiples of the commodity price and are less exposed to its movement.

For baking, the advice is unchanged: good supermarket dark chocolate is the right choice and always was. For eating, a single good bar bought less often is a better response to price than a cheaper bar bought as usual — the cheap end is where the formulation compromises land first.

Reading the ingredients list is worth more now than it was five years ago, because the compromises are declared there.