Chocolate prices have shot up since the start of the year, and it’s only expected to worsen. Some supermarkets are charging as much as £6 for the pleasure of a large bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, and shoppers have been warned to “prepare to pay more”.

The root of the cost surge stems from a poor cocoa harvest in December, leading the global price of cocoa to peak at a “record-breaking” $12,900 per tonne. To put this into perspective, Giles Atwell, co-founder of chocolatier Russell and Atwell, told Express.co.uk: “Cocoa prices typically sat around $3,000–5,000 per tonne for decades.”

Mr Atwell continued: “The spike was driven by a -14% drop in global production, extreme weather in West Africa, and crop disease like cacao swollen shoot virus. For anyone working with chocolate, pricing right now is nothing short of a nightmare – even before you factor in global tariff uncertainty.”

At the time of writing, a large Dairy Milk Chocolate Bar (360g) will set you back around £5 in UK supermarkets. Tesco Clubcard holders are offered the cheapest deal at £4.25, while non-Clubcard holders face forking out £5.

Asda offers the second lowest price at £4.98, just short of Morrison’s £5 bar. Sainsbury’s is charging £5.85, while Waitrose, unsurprisingly, takes the lead with the most expensive £6 price tag.

Mr Atwell said: “The belief is that the market will rise again by the end of 2025 to $9500 per tonne with output increases and Nigeria only partially offsetting unpredictable weather and historically very tight stock levels. It will then soften a little into 2026.”

He added: “Rather like the ‘fiscal headroom’ – there isn’t much room for manoeuvre in cocoa. It’s likely to get a little worse before starting to improve in 2026 – but for the rest of this year, prepare to pay more for chocolate bars.”

Claire Burnet, co-founder of premium Dorset-based chocolate company Chococo, warned the higher price may stick around for longer.

Ivory Coast and Ghana account for over 60% of global cocoa production. Ms Burnet said: “Unlike in other cocoa-growing regions around the world, government-run cocoa boards in these countries set the price at which cocoa farmers are paid, and this ‘farmgate price’ has traditionally been set well below the market price.”

She explained that this has suited the multinational companies known as ‘Big Chocolate’, as it has kept the price of cocoa down and allowed them to persuade consumers to think of chocolate as a “cheap food.”

However, Ms Burnet said: “This artificial suppression of the price that the 1.5 million cocoa farmers in these countries are paid has had a disastrous effect on the long-term viability of growing cocoa in West Africa.”

The chocolatier said that, while farmgate prices have been increased recently in response to the price shock, they are now $3,620 per tonne in the Ivory Coast and only $3,070 per tonne in Ghana—well below the current market price of $8,000 per tonne.

Ms Burnet continued: “The average output of a cocoa farmer in Ghana is just one tonne per year as most are smallholder farmers with farms of less than five hectares.”

If the cocoa farmers are not earning a living wage, Ms Burnet warned: “It’s a downward spiral. Cocoa farmers are getting older as young farmers don’t want to grow cocoa. They cannot afford to employ workers or invest in their farms, so they have ageing cocoa trees with an increased risk of disease and decreasing yields.

“If you then overlay climate change, affecting the formerly regular wet and dry seasons, you have a perfect storm of issues that result in poor harvests and sharply rising prices.”

Therefore, Ms Burnet argued that cocoa should be treated with the “respect that it is due”.

She added: “Why do we treat coffee, wine and olive oils with more respect and are prepared to pay high prices for them? Cocoa will only grow in ‘the cocoa belt’, up to 20 degrees on either side of the Equator, and it is a slow food for farmers to grow.

“The cocoa price will never go back down to the artificially low price it was before 2024, and neither should it. We as consumers in the West need to stop thinking of it as a cheap food, and cocoa farmers in West Africa need to be paid a living wage to invest in their farms and make it an economically viable crop for them and their families.”