As of: March 6, 2024, 4:25 p.m
By: Lennart Schwenck
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For many people, chocolate bunnies and eggs are part of Easter.
But that could be an expensive pleasure this year.
Supermarkets are “worried”.
Munich – Shortly before Easter, supermarkets in neighboring Switzerland significantly increased the prices for chocolate eggs, bunnies and the like.
Products from Ferrero, for example, recorded a price increase of up to 12 percent.
Reason enough to check with food suppliers in this country almost three weeks before Easter: Are German consumers expecting an Easter that is as expensive as in Switzerland?
According to Blick.ch,
the above-average price increase for chocolate products is
due to the soaring raw material prices for cocoa, which also affects Germany.
After rising in 2023, cocoa prices rose again by around 50 percent this year.
The reason for the price increase is the supply crisis in West Africa.
Is there a risk of a price shock for chocolate in the supermarket shortly before Easter?
Rewe gives reasons and causes
When asked by
IPPEN.MEDIA
, Thomas Bonrath, press spokesman for the Rewe Group, which also owns the discount brand Penny, confirmed: “The most important countries for cocoa cultivation include Ivory Coast and Ghana (almost 70 percent of the global cocoa harvest comes from both countries alone) and Ecuador, but also Brazil.”
For many people, Easter includes: chocolate eggs and bunnies.
But in 2024 these could become an expensive pleasure.
© Imago
Bonrath continued: “We have been experiencing significant price increases for cocoa on the raw material exchanges for many years.
This is particularly because global demand is significantly greater than supply.
“In addition, growing areas such as Ghana and Ivory Coast are increasingly suffering from crop failures due to climate change – the cocoa plantations are drying out.”
Due to climate change, cocoa producers have too low crop yields
Thomas Bonrath currently believes that the seasonal harmattan winds are primarily responsible for this.
Like the El Niño phenomenon, they are causing worry lines for chocolate farmers.
“Consequently, there is growing concern about the upcoming intermediate harvest in the growing countries,” said the press spokesman for the Rewe Group.
Because of this, Ivory Coast even “suspended trading in futures contracts for the next harvest” at the beginning of February.
This affects all planned deliveries from October 2024.
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Price increases at Easter?
Lidl “does not want to pass on all price increases to our customers”
But what does this mean for food in Germany and, in the short term, for Easter?
Bonrath explains: “From our food retail perspective, it cannot be inferred per se that all chocolate or all products containing cocoa will become more expensive.
The reasons for this include the intense price competition in the industry, ongoing contracts, manufacturer stockpiling and the actual cocoa content of the products.
Against this background, we do not want to take part in price speculation.”
Discounter Lidl at least gives hope that the increase in raw material prices will not be passed on to consumers: “It is always our aim to offer a wide variety of everyday products at the usual low Lidl price.
Therefore, if possible, we do not pass on all price increases to our customers and reduce prices when the raw material markets relax,” Lidl press spokeswoman Gloria Funke told
IPPEN.MEDIA
.
Meanwhile, there was also a real price explosion in supermarkets and discounters in another neighboring country of Germany.
In Austria, food prices rose by up to 71 percent.
(ls)