A new crisis: Cocoa bean prices reach 30-year high

Since the start of the year, prices per cocoa tonne have risen by around 20%, topping 3,600 dollars in late February, a thirty-year high. Moreover, over the past two years of crisis, the price of cocoa beans has surged by 40%, putting major domestic chocolate producers in the face of a dilemma: surviving in the context where raising chocolate prices is not an option on a market that fell by 10% in 2009 and by around 20-25% in 2010.
Solutions domestic chocolate producers have embraced include long-term cocoa purchase contracts landed in periods when prices were more reasonable. Another strategy was to boost production by shifting to foreign markets, less harmed by the falling demand. Thus, revenues had a growth base, with fixed costs maintaining flat.
Mihu] Cr`ciun, general manager of Kandia, one of the best-known domestic brands, says that despite the accuracy of some mathematical calculations, they cannot be applied as such on the domestic market, where demand has significantly shrunk over the past two year.