Britain loves chocolate.
We’re estimated to consume 8.2kg each every year, a good chunk of it at Christmas, but the cost of that everyday luxury habit has been rising fast.
Whitakers have been making chocolate in Skipton in north Yorkshire for 135 years, but they have never experienced price pressures as extreme as those in the last five.
“We buy liquid chocolate and since 2023, the price of our chocolate has doubled,” explains William Whitaker, the real-life Willy Wonka and the fourth generation of the family to run the business.
“It could have been worse. If we hadn’t been contracted [with a supplier], it would have trebled.
“That represents a £5,000 per-tonne increase, and we use a thousand tonnes a year. And we only sell £12-£13m of product, so it’s a massive effect.”
Whitakers makes 10 million pieces of chocolate a week in a factory on the much-expanded site of the original bakery where the business began.
Automated production lines snake through the site moulding, cutting, cooling, coating and wrapping a relentless procession of fondants, cremes, crisps and pure chocolate products for customers, including own-brand retail, supermarkets, and the catering trade.
Steepest inflation in the business
All of them have faced price increases as Whitakers has grappled with some of the steepest inflation in the food business.
Cocoa prices have soared in the last two years, largely because of a succession of poor cocoa harvests in West Africa, where Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce around two-thirds of global supply.
A combination of drought and crop disease cut global output by around 14% last year, pushing consumer prices in the other direction, with chocolate inflation passing 17% in the UK in October.
Skimpflation and shrinkflation
Some major brands have responded by cutting the chocolate content of products – “skimpflation” – or charging more for less – “shrinkflation”.
Household-name brands including Penguin and Club have cut the cocoa and milk solid content so far they can no longer be classified as chocolate, and are marketed instead as “chocolate-flavour”.
Whitakers have stuck to their recipes and product sizes, choosing to pass price increases on to customers while adapting products to the new market conditions.
“Not only are major brands putting up prices over 20%, sometimes 40%, they’ve also reduced the size of their pieces and sometimes the ingredients,” says William Whitaker.
“We haven’t done any of that. We knew that long-term, the market will fall again, and that happier days will return.
“We’ve introduced new products where we’ve used chocolate as a coating rather than a solid chocolate because the centre, which is sugar-based, is cheaper than the chocolate.
“We’ve got a big product range of fondant creams, and others like gingers and Brazil nuts, where we’re using that chocolate as a coating.”
A deluge of price rises
Brazil nuts have enjoyed their own spike in price, more than doubling to £15,000 a tonne at one stage.
On top of commodity prices determined by markets beyond their control, Whitakers face the same inflationary pressures as other UK businesses.
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“We’ve had the minimum wage increasing every year, we had the national insurance rise last year, and sort of hidden a little bit in this budget is a business rate increase.
“This is a small business, we turn over £12m, but our rates will go up nearly £100,000 next year before any other costs.
“If you add up all the cocoa and all the other cost increases in 2024 and 2025, it’s nearly £3m of cost increases we’ve had to bear. Some of that is returning to a little normality. It does test the relevance of what you do.”
