Expensive cocoa will change the contents of Halloween candy baskets this year – News

Valentine’s Day, Easter and now Halloween. Confectionery retailers need to get creative this holiday season in ways to deal with cocoa shortages and high prices. As a result, consumers are finding smaller packages of chocolate bars or more non-chocolate foods on store shelves.

One of the solutions is to reduce the size of the product, which is a practice that consumers in the Czech Republic have been dealing with recently. Another option is to change the composition, when the chocolate part can be replaced with wafers or nuts.

“There are products that can be filled with something else because that way you don’t have to have as much chocolate to make them,” she said. CNN Sally Lyons Wyatt, Senior Consultant, Consumer Packaged Goods, Circana.

According to the company Mars, in addition to chocolate bars that are also behind brands such as Skittles and M&M’s, the preferences of the customers themselves are also changing. Although chocolate products are still dominant, the demand for fruit and gummy sweets is growing among young consumers. Mars is extending its Halloween offer.

The trend is also confirmed by data from analysts, who register growth in sales and production of non-cocoa products. Sales of non-chocolate confectionery in the US increased 12.1 percent last year, surpassing the growth of chocolate sales (5.8 percent), which CNN reported. a message National Firefighters Association.

However, chocolate doesn’t just disappear. Last year, it accounted for more than half of total confectionery sales, the NCA said. “Consumers are buying less than before, but chocolate is still the best-selling category,” said Lyons Wyatt.

Since the height of spring, when one ton on the New York Stock Exchange at one time was sold for more than 11,000 dollars (CZK 256,000), the price of cocoa has stabilized in the range between seven and eight thousand dollars in the two months went away But even that is twice the value from autumn last year.

The reason for such a large increase in the price was the natural conditions, which were very unfavorable for the cultivation of cocoa in the last three years. Key regions of West Africa, where up to 70 percent of the world’s cocoa supply is grown, were hit by the El Niño phenomenon, which brought warmer temperatures and drought, followed by heavy rains that spread fungal disease. among cocoa trees, leading to depletion. production.

As a result, the International Cocoa Group predicted in August that global cocoa production would fall by 14.2 percent this season.

High commodity prices have already affected the economic results of chocolate giant Hershey, whose operating profit fell nearly 49 percent year-on-year in the second quarter.

According to analysts and cocoa traders, prices are expected to remain at record levels until September 2025. At least the good news is that the upcoming harvest should be better, because the weather so far has been favorable to cocoa growers.