The shopping bill for Easter promises to be a little heavier.
The Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngli will increase its prices again in 2024 and 2025 to cope with the surge in cocoa prices after assets have already increased by 10.1% on average in 2023.
The group, which published its annual results on Tuesday, saw the bill for its raw materials soar with cocoa prices.
They are pushed to peaks due to a production deficit linked to heavy rains which damaged crops and a pod disease.
At the end of February, a tonne of cocoa exceeded $6,500 in New York, an increase of more than 150% since January 2023, and came close to 6,000 pounds sterling in London, an increase of more than 170% since the start. of last year.
Increases until 2025
The chocolatier therefore warned that it would have to negotiate additional price increases in 2024 and 2025 “if cocoa prices remain at this level”.
For 2024, the group is aiming for a “mid-single digit” increase of around 5%, declared its managing director, Adalbert Lechner, during a press conference.
According to calculations by Patrik Schwendimann, analyst at Zurich Cantonal Bank, the group would need to raise its prices “around 12%” for 2025 if prices remain at this level, “which would risk putting pressure on volumes”.
“We hope that the increase will be significantly lower than that,” however declared the boss of Lindt & Sprüngli, without corroborating this estimate, the group wanting to remain “cautious” on price increases, because “we know that consumers are sensitive to it,” he insisted.
For 2025, “we will have to monitor the evolution of cocoa prices” and make a decision “by the middle of the year,” he said.
Also read: Inflation slows in February to +2.9% year-on-year
In 2023, the Swiss chocolatier published a net profit better than expected, up 17.9% compared to the previous year, at 698.5 million euros, thanks in particular to a lower tax charge.
It has also benefited from the resumption of tourism, its chocolates often being sold in airport duty-free shops.
In 2023, “consumers have tightened their belts”, admitted Adalbert Lechner, but the so-called “premium” segment, which corresponds to the high-end fraction of chocolate sold in supermarkets “has held up well”, he said. insisted.