Demand is rising at the fastest pace in three years, according to Euromonitor International Ltd., and farmers in West Africa aren’t growing enough cocoa to keep up. The cost of beans used to make chocolate reached a 30-month high in March, forcing confectioners to charge their customers more.
Lucy Armstrong, who sells sweets online from Chichester, England, said the cost of a 10-kilogram (22-pound) pack of bulk chocolate she uses to make champagne truffles, pralines and salty caramels surged 18 percent this year to 59 pounds ($98). She’s raised the price of chocolate Easter eggs by 50 percent from last year, just before demand picks up for the holiday on April 20, and she plans another increase in the next six months.
“It’s definitely the first time where the chocolate has gone up quite noticeably,” said Armstrong, who started Lucy Armstrong Chocolates three years ago and now charges 7.5 pounds for a 170-gram Belgian milk-chocolate egg containing six hand-made chocolates, up from 5 pounds in 2013. “It is hard to try and work out what you can sell and at what price. The problem is it’s only going to go up and up and up.”
Cocoa may rally to $3,210 a metric ton on ICE Futures U.S. in New York by the end of December, the highest since July 2011, according to the average estimate of 14 traders and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. That would be up 6.3 percent from yesterday’s closing price and top this year’s high of $3,039, reached on March 17.
Read More: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-17/chocolate-egg-easter-surprise-is-sticker-shock-on-cocoa.html
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