Section 3 of 4
The 2024–25 price spike, West African harvests, EU deforestation rules, and the suppliers behind the brands.
The 2024–25 cocoa price spike — ICCO data, the two consecutive West African harvest failures, the demand-supply gap, and how Lindt, Ferrero, Mondelēz, Hershey, Mars and Nestlé have responded in public filings.
Photo: KLT Dinusha / Pexels
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The 2024–25 cocoa price spike — ICCO data, the two consecutive West African harvest failures, the demand-supply gap, and how Lindt, Ferrero, Mondelēz, Hershey, Mars and Nestlé have responded in public filings. Every figure dated and attributed.
What happened to the 2023 and 2024 main-crop harvests in the two countries that supply roughly 60 percent of world cocoa — weather, disease, the Living Income Differential mechanism, and the gap between the farmgate price farmers received and the ICE futures price. Sources: ICCO, Cocoa Barometer, dated trade reporting.
EUDR Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 — what it requires of cocoa exporters and importers, the December 2024 delay, and what it means in practice for supply chains that run through Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. The regulation itself as the primary source.
Shrinkflation in the chocolate aisle — documented bar-weight reductions by named manufacturers — alongside the quiet substitution of cocoa-butter equivalents (CBEs) in compound products. What CBE is, which fats are permitted under EU regulation, and how to read an ingredients panel to spot the change.
Barry Callebaut, Cargill and Olam as the industrial suppliers behind the brands most readers recognise — what each does, roughly what share of global grinding capacity each holds (figures from company annual reports, dated), and why their decisions shape what Valrhona and the bean-to-bar makers can buy.
Where the crop in this section comes from. Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana supply roughly 60% of the world total, and the two harvests that failed were theirs.
Geometry: project map kit