Chocolate Orange Price Doubles and Size Shrinks Amid Rising Costs and Cocoa Supply Issues
The price of a Chocolate Orange has nearly doubled across major UK supermarkets, rising from £1.24 in December 2022 to about £2.25 in 2025, while its weight has decreased by 12 grams, an 8% shrink. When accounting for this smaller size, the price-per-gram has surged by approximately 96%. This trend of shrinking chocolate products at higher prices is not isolated; other Christmas favorites like Toblerone and Quality Street have also reduced in size, with some products labelled "chocolate flavour" containing more palm oil and shea oil than cocoa.
In Western Europe, chocolate bar prices have increased by over 50% since 2021 and about 18% since last year. These price hikes are driven by rising costs across the entire chocolate supply chain, including increased prices for cocoa, sugar, milk, packaging, transport, and wages. Mondelez, a major chocolate manufacturer, has reported higher input costs alongside increased energy and transport expenses. Additionally, non-labour manufacturing costs in the UK have risen by about 39% from January 2020 to September 2025 due to factors such as packaging tax, higher national insurance contributions, minimum wage increases, and increased energy and transport costs. Retailers in the UK have also banned multibuys on these products since October to manage price pressures.
A significant contributor to price increases is the constrained supply of cocoa, of which over 60% is sourced from Ivory Coast and Ghana. The year 2023 saw extreme rainfall that resulted in black pod disease, drought, and swollen shoot virus affecting cocoa crops, forcing replacements of disease-affected trees and delaying yields since new cocoa trees take years to mature. Cocoa prices peaked at around $12,000 per tonne (around £9,000), about double the 2022 levels, and have remained elevated since. Rising demand from countries like India and China further intensifies pressure on supply, exacerbating price volatility.
Fairtrade initiatives attempt to reduce risk for farmers through measures such as shade-tree planting, but most farmers outside these schemes face volatile, market-driven prices. Larger producers benefit from scale advantages with lower purchasing costs, while smaller producers are charged more, especially for higher cocoa content products like 70% cocoa bars, which have experienced the largest price increases.
