UK consumers are paying more for chocolate eggs this Easter even as global cocoa prices tumble, as manufacturers try to recoup losses from a recent surge in the price of the raw material that analysts say will leave lasting marks on the confectionery industry.
Prices for cocoa in New York and London have plunged more than 70 per cent from record highs in 2024, as crop yields in West Africa, the world’s main growing region, have improved and consumer demand in Europe and the US has fallen.
This is in stark contrast with prices of most other soft commodities, which have risen over the past month on fears of lasting disruption to supply chains from the US-Israeli war on Iran.
But cheaper cocoa has yet to flow through to chocolate prices in the shops, giving manufacturers an opportunity to take advantage of Easter demand to recoup some of the production costs sustained when the raw material price was higher.
US retail prices for sweets and chocolate have risen 12 per cent over the past year, according to Federal Reserve data. In the Netherlands, Albert Heijn, the country’s largest supermarket chain, is selling mini chocolate eggs at €3.50 for 175 grammes, compared with €2.50 for 200 grammes two years ago, investment bank ING has found.
The British Retail Consortium estimates UK consumers are paying on average 9 per cent more for a chocolate egg this year than they were a year ago, even though the average egg’s weight is only marginally greater.
One reason is that lower cocoa prices have yet to work their way through to the shops. “There’s a lag between when companies buy cocoa and when chocolate is priced and sold at the retail level,” said Sammy Rolls of Expana, a commodity information service. “For this Easter, most cocoa would have been bought back in May, June and July of last year.”
In addition, there was “a clear stimulus” for manufacturers not to cut prices as input costs fall, given that their margins had previously been squeezed while cocoa prices were rising, said Thijs Geijer, a senior economist covering food and agriculture at ING.
“If they maybe had margin pressure on the way up, then you want to recoup some of that on the way down,” he said.
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Analysts at Morgan Stanley say costs for chocolate makers in Europe and the US should come down from the second quarter of this year, easing the pressure on margins.
Cocoa futures prices began falling last year as consumers balked at steep price rises. The fall accelerated sharply in January and February of this year, triggered by much weaker than expected data on the quantity of cocoa beans being ground – a proxy for demand – in Europe, North America and Asia. This came just as the weather in West Africa improved and forecasts pointed to a large surplus this season and next.
Even so, analysts say, chocolate prices are unlikely to return to levels seen before the surge in cocoa prices in 2024 and 2025, when poor weather and years of underinvestment in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the main growers, vastly reduced harvests and squeezed global supply.
Chocolate makers responded by shrinking their products, tweaking recipes to use less cocoa and more cocoa butter substitutes and raising prices in an attempt to protect their margins.
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For UK shoppers, the price of a Galaxy Easter egg has more than doubled per 100g since 2023, while Cadbury’s Creme Eggs are 81 per cent more expensive over the same period, according to analysis by the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit of data from market research firm Assosia.
Consumer group Which? found branded chocolate eggs on sale at UK supermarkets this year were smaller and more expensive than they were a year ago, with the combined impact resulting in price rises per 100g of about 40 per cent.
Such “shrinkflation” has gone down badly with consumers. Retail sales of chocolate in the six months to January were down 6 per cent from a year earlier in Europe and 4 per cent in the US, according to data compiled by Morgan Stanley.
Not all prices have gone up. Own-brand chocolate sold by supermarkets such as Tesco is typically cheaper and has more cocoa in it than big brands. Marks & Spencer, which sells mainly its own-brand chocolate, said prices, sizes and the cocoa content of its Easter eggs had not changed in four years.
But some manufacturers have made big changes to chocolate products, leaving some containing so little cocoa that they can no longer be described as chocolate in the UK and the European Union.
Penguin and Club bars from biscuit maker McVitie’s, for example, must now be described as “chocolate flavoured”. So must Nestlé products including its Toffee Crisp bar. But those changes, introduced in late 2025, have had a limited impact on sales, said Oran van Dort, commodity analyst at Rabobank.
“If you can make chocolate for less and get away with it, then why not?” he said.
Nor are those recipes likely to go back to the way they were as the cocoa shock unwinds, analysts say.
“Historically, cocoa demand rebounded pretty immediately when we’d have a price shock,” said Pamela Thornton, a veteran cocoa trader.
But this time is different, she said. “The size of the rally caused innovation on a scale we have never seen before, and once people have made changes, if their sales haven’t dropped or haven’t dropped substantially … We don’t know to what degree the industry is going to rush to go back to the full-scale chocolate.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026