You famously never know what you’re going to get when you open a box of chocolates. But for Belgium, a state that’s synonymous with the high-end confectionery, soaring cocoa prices are making life for the nation’s chocolate aficionados even more uncertain than usual.
This year, after extreme weather hammered west Africa’s cocoa harvest for the third consecutive year, prices soared in response. Cocoa futures trading in London and New York temporarily hit as high as €9,300 per ton, triple last year’s amount.
The gaping shortage of beans has percolated its way through to Europe’s premier confectionery hub, putting chocolate makers under unprecedented cost pressure and forcing up prices just as seasonal demand peaks going into the Easter holiday.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But for Belgium, a state that’s synonymous with the high-end confectionery, soaring cocoa prices are making life for the nation’s chocolate aficionados even more uncertain than usual.
The gaping shortage of beans has percolated its way through to Europe’s premier confectionery hub, putting chocolate makers under unprecedented cost pressure and forcing up prices just as seasonal demand peaks going into the Easter holiday.
But while there’s no doubt chocolatiers are perturbed by the crisis, for now, a sense of stoicism prevails in the industry linked to the presumption that chocolate addicts are far less price sensitive than conventional consumers.
“I don’t think I’ll ever stop eating chocolate [no matter the price],” said Luci Comincioli, inside the Lindt shop on Rue Du Luxembourg, at the heart of the capital’s European Quarter.
These countries’ farmers are facing financial hardship due to climate change, aging trees and the proliferation of diseases that threaten the fragile economics of cocoa.
The result is an industry in dramatic decline, with many west African farmers likely to quit cocoa entirely unless a higher price norm that can account for sustainable farming is established soon.
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