Chocolate prices have risen faster than the average rate of food inflation in Belgium over the past year, prompting many citizens to reduce their consumption of one of the country's most beloved delicacies.
According to a recent joint study by consumer rights organisation Test Achats and Belgian media outlets Le Soir, RTL and Sudinfo, chocolate prices in October this year were 11.5% higher than in the same month in 2022.
Such an increase is well above Belgium's current annual food inflation rate of 8.98%. It is also roughly 30 times higher than the annual headline rate of 0.36%.
Speaking to Le Soir, Nathalie Roisin, a spokesperson for Colruyt Group, explained that the surge in chocolate prices has triggered a steep drop in demand.
"In terms of sales, the Belgian chocolate market has been declining for the last 12 months," she said. "The increase in chocolate prices, combined with the general inflation of foodstuffs, has encouraged consumers to stop buying chocolate."
"[Chocolate] is a pleasure product that customers buy to spoil themselves, to comfort themselves. But now they do it less often than before."
Changing climate, rising prices
Other analysts interviewed by the newspaper attributed the price increase to poor agricultural yields triggered by climate change, which have pushed up world cocoa prices by 50%.
"The world price of cocoa has gone up," said Carole Dembour, Senior Economic Affairs Advisor at Fevia, the Belgian food industry federation. "[The increase] is largely due to bad climate conditions in West Africa, where the main producing countries are Ghana and Ivory Coast. They have suffered floods and periods of drought attributable to climate change."
Other industry experts suggested that such climate change-induced disruptions will cause prices to continue to surge over the coming years.
"In the future, chocolate is still likely to increase because of the price increase for cocoa beans," said Salvatore Iannello, the CEO of Galler, a Liège-based chocolate maker. "Climate change is disrupting harvests, which leads to a tension between supply and demand."
"Clear-headedness is now essential in our business' functioning, otherwise chocolate will be very expensive."
Greedflation once again?
While the chocolate price increase was notable, it paled in comparison to that of other food items including carrots (45.03%), ketchup (44.74%) and onions (41.42%).
Interestingly, Test Achats suggested that some of the price hikes might partly be a result of "greedflation" (companies increasing prices by more than is necessary to account for rising costs).
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In particular, the group found that since March 2022 the price of vegetable oils has fallen by 52% on international markets but risen by 38% in Belgian supermarkets.
Similarly, Test Achats reported that international market prices for dairy products have fallen by 28% since June 2022, while supermarket prices in Belgium have increased by 31% for young cheese and 15% for semi-skimmed milk items over the same period.
