Germany: 13.6 kilos of chocolate per capita were produced in 2023
Import prices for cocoa beans, the most important chocolate ingredient, almost doubled in October 2024 compared to the same month last year
Whether as Santa Clauses, pralines, classic bars or in Advent calendars: more and more chocolate is being produced in Germany. In 2023, almost 1.14 million tons of cocoa-based chocolate products worth a good 6.48 billion euros were produced in this country. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), a good 13.6 kilograms of chocolate per capita were produced at the end of 2023. This corresponds to around 2.6 bars per capita per week. In 2023, 4.6% more chocolate was produced than in the previous year. Compared to 2019 with 1.01 million tons, chocolate production increased by 12.8 %.
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Import prices for cocoa at a historically high level in 2024
The most important ingredient in chocolate is cocoa, which is mainly imported in the form of cocoa beans and broken cocoa beans as well as cocoa mass or cocoa butter, fat and oil. Imports of cocoa were recently almost twice as expensive as a year earlier. Import prices for cocoa beans rose by 91.5% in October 2024 compared to the same month last year. Imports of cocoa mass, cocoa butter, cocoa fat and cocoa oil rose by 114.7% in the same period.
The sharpest increase in import prices for cocoa since the start of the time series in 1963 was recorded in April 2024: At that time, imports of cocoa beans were more than three times as expensive (+208.0%) as in the same month of the previous year, while import prices for cocoa mass and cocoa butter had risen by 173.4%. Although the increase has slowed somewhat since then, import prices for cocoa are still at an exceptionally high level.
1.6% less cocoa imported from January to September 2024 than in the same period last year
One reason for the sharp rise in import prices for the raw material cocoa is likely to be its scarcity on the global market as a result of poor harvests, particularly in West Africa. Despite the shortage and high prices, cocoa imports to Germany have only fallen slightly recently: from January to September 2024, they amounted to a total of 540,400 tons. This was 1.6% less than in the same period last year. The most important country of origin for cocoa is Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast): At 167,100 tons, just under a third (30.9%) of imports to Germany came from there.
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
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