Commercial presentation Update: 27/03/2024 19:00
Issued by: 03/27/2024, 12:23 p.m
Prague – The rising price of cocoa will not be reflected in the final products for many months, Tomáš Prouza, president of the Trade and Tourism Association of the Czech Republic, told ČTK today. However, due to the strong competition on the market, he does not expect the retail chains to significantly increase their prices. Higher prices are announced by chocolate factories contacted by ČTK. If the situation with cocoa on the stock market does not improve, people will pay five to ten percent more for products from Čokoládovna Janek. The Steiner & Kovařík chocolate shop then assumes that prices will be lower by tens of percent. The price of cocoa exceeded USD 10,000 (roughly CZK 232,600) per ton for the first time on Tuesday.
“Today’s price of cocoa will not be reflected in the final products for many months, this will be countered by lower prices of energy and other raw materials,” said Prouza. According to him, out of more than 10,000 items, retail chains offer dozens of cocoa products, such as chocolates. “In general, I don’t expect anyone to allow themselves to raise prices beyond what the supplier adjusts. Rather the opposite. It is therefore necessary to ask the producers why they want to raise prices when they are still producing from cheap cocoa from the previous harvest,” he added.
According to manager Václav Durďák, the price of the Janek Chocolate Factory rose by a tenth year-on-year in January. “But what’s quite unfortunate is that it hasn’t been so much an increase due to cocoa prices on the stock exchange, but an increase in the price of all inputs in general over the last two to three years,” he said. When the company ordered cocoa stocks for this year at the end of last year, the prices of this commodity were already high, according to DurĪk, but still 60 percent lower than now. “We never started to cheat the products when the price of input increased, but we simply also increased the price so that we could maintain the quality and taste of the products. In the past, we had the same development with the price of vanilla, for example,” he added.
The co-owner of the Steiner & Kovařík chocolate factory, Petr Kovařík, said that the prices of cocoa beans for industrial chocolate manufacturers can rise up to fivefold. “We producers, who produce traditionally, slowly and using ball mills, are also affected by this situation, but relatively much less, because before this we were buying at much higher prices for reasons of sustainability and direct purchase from farmers,” he said. Nevertheless, he assumes that the prices of the Steiner & Kovařík chocolate factory will increase by tens of percent, due to the current situation with cocoa. According to him, this will be especially evident on bar chocolates.
The Saint-Tropez confectionary in Prague is still waiting for a possible increase in the price of cocoa products. Already last year, due to higher inflation and energy prices, it had to raise prices, which led to a decrease in interest in sweet products by seven to ten percent, said company executive Lukáš Otys. “Overall sales have decreased and we don’t want to further demotivate the customer and lead them to consider visiting the pastry shop,” he said.
Nestlé spokesperson for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Tereza Skrbková, does not expect cocoa prices on the commodity markets to return to their original level after the current increase, due to the long-term problems that accompany the production of this commodity. “They are stabilizing at a new level that will prove that cocoa is a valuable commodity and its availability has its limits,” she said. One of the reasons for the increase in cocoa prices, according to analysts, is a poor crop of beans in Africa due to high temperatures.
On the contrary, for restaurants, according to the president of the Association of Hotels and Restaurants of the Czech Republic, Václav Starek, cocoa is not such an essential item. “Personally, I think the rise in cocoa prices will have a marginal effect on restaurants,” he said.
World of the Czech Republic food market stock markets cocoa chocolate prices
