Cocoa prices are soaring to record levels. What it means for consumers and why ‘the worst is still yet to come’
A farmers holds cocoa beans while he is drying them at a village in Sinfra, Ivory Coast, on April 29, 2023.
Luc Gnago | Reuters
Consumers could start to see the effect of surging cocoa prices as the world faces the worst supply deficit in decades, with farmers in West Africa struggling against bad weather, disease and failing trees.
Cocoa futures for May delivery surged to an all-time intraday high of $10,080 per metric ton Tuesday before ending the day down 0.3% to settle at $9,622. Cocoa has more than tripled in cost over the past year and is up 129% in 2024.
Hershey CEO Michele Buck told CNBC last month that the company has a hedging strategy to manage the price volatility. The National Confectioners Association told CNBC in an email that the industry is working with retailers to “manage down costs” and keep chocolate affordable for consumers.
Though the large chocolate companies were well-hedged last year and did not have to immediately pass on high prices to consumers, there is only so much the industry can do to absorb costs, said Paul Joules, a commodities analyst at Rabobank.
The world is facing the largest cocoa supply deficit in more than 60 years and consumers could start to see the effect at the end of this year or early 2025, Joules said. The International Cocoa Organization has forecast a supply deficit of 374,000 tons for the 2023-24 season, a 405% increase from a deficit of 74,000 tons in the previous season.
“The worst is still yet to come,” Joules said. Cocoa prices will likely remain elevated for some time because there are no easy fixes to the systemic issues facing the market, he said.
Cocoa in past 12 months
Consumers could face higher prices or “shrinkflation” in the form of smaller chocolate bars, Joules said. Companies might also adjust ingredients to use less cocoa in some products, he said. The worst sticker shock would come from dark chocolate, which has a very high cocoa content, the analyst said.
David Branch, sector manager at Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute, said consumers could see higher prices as soon as Easter, which is on Sunday.
“Given that cocoa prices and other manufacturing costs have been rising steadily over the past year, it is likely consumers will see a price spike on chocolate candy this Easter,” Branch told clients in a research note this month.
Cocoa prices have been on a tear due to supply disruptions in the key producing nations of Ivory Coast and Ghana, Joules said. The two countries represent about 60% of global cocoa production.
Crops have been hit by black pod disease and swollen shoot virus and many trees are past their maximum yield potential because there has not been a major round of planting since the early 2000s, Joules said.
Heavy rains exacerbated the disease issues, Branch said, and the El Niño weather phenomenon has also led to drier conditions resulting in lower cocoa yields in previous years. Seasonal harmattan winds were more extreme this year, also affecting crop yields, Branch said.
Farmers in Ivory Coast are increasingly exiting cocoa production for more lucrative crops such as rubber, Joules said. The governments of Ghana and Ivory Coast set fixed prices for the farmers at the start of the season so they are not benefiting from the currently rally, the analyst said.
The recent runup is likely due to panic among some commercial buyers rather than market speculation, Joules said. Buyers see the magnitude of the supply deficit and are trying to secure the cocoa that is available, according to the analyst.
Speculators contributed to the early leg of the rally last year as they bet on higher prices by increasing their long positions, Joules said, but they have been exiting those positions this year to book profits.
The spike in prices has hit chocolate giant Hershey, which sees flat earnings for the year. Hershey stock is down about 22% over the past 12 months, while Nestle’s Switzerland-listed shares have shed about 13% during the same period.
Thanks to Trump’s repeated executive order attacks on US clean energy policy, nearly $8 billion in investments and 16 new large-scale factories and other projects were cancelled, closed, or downsized in Q1 2025.
The $7.9 billion in investments withdrawn since January are more than three times the total investments cancelled over the previous 30 months, according to nonpartisan policy group E2’s latest Clean Economy Works monthly update.
However, companies continue to invest in the US renewable sector. Businesses in March announced 10 projects worth more than $1.6 billion for new solar, EV, and grid and transmission equipment factories across six states. That includes Tesla’s plan to invest $200 million in a battery factory near Houston that’s expected to create at least 1,500 new jobs. Combined, the projects are expected to create at least 5,000 new permanent jobs if completed.
Michael Timberlake of E2 said, “Clean energy companies still want to invest in America, but uncertainty over Trump administration policies and the future of critical clean energy tax credits are taking a clear toll. If this self-inflicted and unnecessary market uncertainty continues, we’ll almost certainly see more projects paused, more construction halted, and more job opportunities disappear.”
March’s 10 new projects bring the overall number of major clean energy projects tracked by E2 to 390 across 42 states and Puerto Rico. Companies have said they plan to invest more than $133 billion in these projects and hire 122,000 permanent workers.
Since Congress passed federal clean energy tax credits in August 2022, 34 clean energy projects have been cancelled, downsized, or shut down altogether, wiping out more than 15,000 jobs and scrapping $10 billion in planned investment, according to E2 and Atlas Public Policy.
However, in just the first three months of 2025, after Trump started rolling back clean energy policies, 13 projects were scrapped or scaled back, totaling more than $5 billion. That includes Bosch pulling the plug on its $200 million hydrogen fuel cell plant in South Carolina and Freyr Battery canceling its $2.5 billion battery factory in Georgia.
Republican-led districts have reaped the biggest rewards from Biden’s clean energy tax credits, but they’re also taking the biggest hits under Trump. So far, more than $6 billion in projects and over 10,000 jobs have been wiped out in GOP districts alone.
And the stakes are high. Through March, Republican districts have claimed 62% of all clean energy project announcements, 71% of the jobs, and a staggering 83% of the total investment.
A full map and list of announcements can be seen on E2’s website here. E2 says it will incorporate cancellation data in the coming weeks.
Read more: FREYR kills plans to build a $2.6 billion battery factory in Georgia
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Tesla has reportedly delayed the launch of its new “affordable EV,” which is believed to be a stripped-down Model Y, in the United States.
Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a pivotal decision that altered the automaker’s direction for the next few years.
The CEO canceled Tesla’s plan to build a cheaper new “$25,000 vehicle” on its next-generation “unboxed” vehicle platform to focus solely on the Robotaxi, utilizing the latest technology, and instead, Tesla plans to build more affordable EVs, though more expensive than previously announced, on its existing Model Y platform.
Musk has believed that Tesla is on the verge of solving self-driving technology for the last few years, and because of that, he believes that a $25,000 EV wouldn’t make sense, as self-driving ride-hailing fleets would take over the lower end of the car market.
However, he has been consistently wrong about Tesla solving self-driving, which he first said would happen in 2019.
In the meantime, Tesla’s sales have been decreasing and the automaker had to throttle down production at all its manufacturing facilities.
That’s why, instead of building new, more affordable EVs on new production lines, Musk decided to greenlight new vehicles built on the same production lines as Model 3 and Model Y – increasing the utilization rate of its existing manufacturing lines.
Those vehicles have been described as “stripped-down Model Ys” with fewer features and cheaper materials, which Tesla said would launch in “the first half of 2025.”
Reuters is now reporting that Tesla is seeing a delay of “at least months” in launching the first new “lower-cost Model Y” in the US:
Tesla has promised affordable vehicles beginning in the first half of the year, offering a potential boost to flagging sales. Global production of the lower-cost Model Y, internally codenamed E41, is expected to begin in the United States, the sources said, but it would be at least months later than Tesla’s public plan, they added, offering a range of revised targets from the third quarter to early next year.
Along with the delay, the report also claims that Tesla aims to produce 250,000 units of the new model in the US by 2026. This would match Tesla’s currently reduced production capacity at Gigafactory Texas and Fremont factory.
The report follows other recent reports coming from China that also claimed Tesla’s new “affordable EVs” are “stripped-down Model Ys.”
The Chinese report references the new version of the Model 3 that Tesla launched in Mexico last year. It’s a regular Model 3, but Tesla removed some features, like the second-row screen, ambient lighting strip, and it uses fabric interior material rather than Tesla’s usual vegan leather.
The new Reuters report also said that Tesla planned to follow the stripped-down Model Y with a similar Model 3.
In China, the new vehicle was expected to come in the second half of 2025, and Tesla was waiting to see the impact of the updated Model Y, which launched earlier this year.
Electrek’s Take
These reports lend weight to what we have been saying for a year now: Tesla’s “more affordable EVs” will essentially be stripped-down versions of the Model Y and Model 3.
While they will enable Tesla to utilize its currently underutilized factories more efficiently, they will also cannibalize its existing Model 3 and Y lineup and significantly reduce its already dwindling gross margins.
I think Musk will sell the move as being good in the long term because it will allow Tesla to deploy more vehicles, which will later generate more revenue through the purchase of the “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) package.
However, that has been his argument for years, and it has yet to pan out as FSD still requires driver supervision and likely will for years to come, resulting in an extremely low take-rate for the $8,000 package.
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Podcast: how Elon killed Tesla Model 2, global EV sales surge, and Chinese EVs keep killing it
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss how Elon Musk killed Tesla Model 2, global EV sales surging, how Chinese EVs keep killing it, and more.
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