What's happening with cacao prices

Cacao prices are hitting record high levels – what’s happening?

Tuesday 11 February 2025

There has been much media coverage around industrial chocolate brands increasing their prices, so you may already be aware of the global surge in cacao bean prices. We’d like to explain how and why we as craft makers are now being so effected. 

First, we need to recap the industrial market: Pricing for industrial cacao has moved from a historic average of around USD$2,000 a ton for the past 20 years - note the price has been this low and barely changed over those 20 years, rather than adjusting with inflation - and today is trading at USD$9,878 a ton. Prices can fluctuate by +/- USD$1,000 a day - just a week ago the price was USD$10,912 a ton - as the industrial market responds to long term weather forecasts and yield reports issued by the governments of Ivory Coast and Ghana. And there are even estimates the price of industrial cacao will reach as high as USD$20,000 a ton.

The increase in cacao bean prices has been driven by an ongoing shortage of cacao beans for the industrial market, which is the culmination of 20+ years of prices being too low to allow reinvestment by poorly paid farmers in West Africa - the main source of the world's industrial grade cacao - combined with the effects of several consecutive years of climate events on cacao trees in the same part of the world.

This has resulted in a substantial shortage of industrial grade cacao beans. Why we (as fine cacao craft chocolate makers) are now being affected so much is because the price of industrial grade cacao beans, determined by Futures Markets in US dollars, has rippled into the craft market as industrial buyers resort to buying up any cacao supplies they can to fill their quotas, no matter the price, for industrial chocolate purposes.

At the industrial end they don’t require cacao beans to be as carefully harvested, fermented and dried as we do (the flavour of the beans is frequently irrelevant), so there is concern there is no longer the incentive for farmers to grow and prepare cacao beans to fine craft levels, meaning that high quality cacao beans may become increasingly scarce. 

At Foundry we have always paid the farmers and co-ops we work with more than the industrial market rate to reflect the work and skill that goes into producing our gorgeous ethical craft cacao beans, so we now have to keep pace and make sure we continue paying above the market rate to warrant the extra effort involved in growing, fermenting and drying cacao to the amazing tasting "fine craft" levels we require, rather than to industrial specification. 

This means we are currently paying a premium of USD$2,000 or $3,000 a ton over the market rate. To put that in perspective - in the last few years the price of some of our beans have increased by over 180% and continue to increase daily.

We will never compromise the quality of our bars. We work with the best fine cacao in the world and will not add other things to our bars to lower the cost of them. We're hearing stories from around the world about industrial chocolate exploring alternative vegetable fats to cocoa butter, reformulating recipes to replace cocoa with other ingredients, or even trying to get the legal definition of what goes into "chocolate" changed so it can be made more cheaply. 

At Foundry we are committed to our 2 ingredient approach to chocolate making - Cacao Beans and Organic Sugar - nothing else to get in the way of the incredible flavours we celebrate and accentuate in each single origin.

We look forward to the coming years harvests and discovering what amazing tasting notes we can accentuate, to share with you.

David & Janelle, Foundry Chocolate