Chocolate crisis: empty cocoa warehouses, no supply

2025-02-17 08:27:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Empty warehouses and poor crop yields are pushing the price of cocoa to record highs.

For many consumers, chocolate products may soon become luxury items.

Cocoa warehouses in London and New York are emptier than ever, and the price of a ton of cocoa is rising to an all-time high. Until 2023, prices were around $2,000. Since then, the price has been rising. Last year, just before Christmas, a record was broken: "A week before Christmas, a ton of cocoa cost almost $13,000 – more than ever before," say experts at investment firm Vontobel.

Currently, the price is around $10,000. So on the eve of Easter, consumers should prepare for expensive chocolate products.

Empty warehouse, no stock

The reason: stocks have been slashed. Stocks on the London Intercontinental Exchange have fallen from more than 100,000 tonnes of usable cocoa a year ago to around 21,000 tonnes in recent months, the Financial Times reports. That’s the lowest level ever seen, Jonathan Parkman, co-head of agriculture at Marex, told the FT. New York’s independent licensed warehouses are also empty, Parkman noted.

Spectacular price increase

Low supply, high demand: "The rise in the price of cocoa has been absolutely spectacular over the last two and a half years," the AP news agency quotes Philippe de Sellier, head of Belgian chocolate maker Leonidas and the Belgian chocolate association Choprabisco.

"The reason for the price increase is a combination of increased demand and reduced supply," say Vontobel experts. Supply has been affected by climate change, plant diseases and the continued decline in investment in cultivation, they write in a market commentary. "We are seeing unprecedented prices," says Bart Van Besien, policy advisor at fair trade group Oxfam. The growing global demand for cocoa products is also due to the fact that a growing share of the world's population has managed to escape poverty. In China, for example, there is a growing appetite for goods such as chocolate.

Shortages are likely to continue

For now, it seems that the current harvest will not bring relief, as weather conditions in the world's largest cocoa suppliers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, remain difficult. In Germany, for example, about 50 percent of imported raw cocoa comes from Ivory Coast, according to the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The dry season is causing problems for farmers. Farmers have been warning for some time about a possible shortage in April.

Therefore, market observers are already looking to the future: if the cocoa harvest really loses momentum, the important raw material for chocolate could become even rarer by Christmas 2025, according to Vontobel./ DW