Cocoa price rises push Penguin and Club bars to remove chocolate

Major rises in cocoa prices this year have been blamed as a key reason for UK snacking group’s move that has meant its classic Penguin and Club bar series can no longer be called chocolate, reports Neill Barston.

With prices of the key ingredient skyrocketing to $12,000 a tonne on futures markets in New York and London, manufacturers have scrambled to find means of reducing production costs, which has included seeking out flavour alternatives, as well as ramping-up ‘shrinkflation’ moves of moves of making product lines smaller for the same, or greater price.

Consequently, Club has now reportedly had to change its renowned slogan of ‘If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuits, join our Club,” to “If you like a lot of biscuit in your break, join our Club.”

For their part, Penguin bars were first introduced into the the UK back in 1932, and following the reformulation move, can now only be described as ‘chocolate flavour,’ prompting a considerable social media backlash.

While cocoa prices have reduced to under $7,000 a tonne over the past few months, this is still more than double the going rate just 18 months ago, as traditional supply chain countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast face multiple challenges of climate change, an ageing agricultural workforce, poor infrastructure, and illegal gold mining placing pressure on the conventional cocoa supply chain.

One user of the X social media platform said: “This only serves to increase profit margins to the companies. If the cocoa content is reduced due to soaring cocoa prices which dictate the price of end product, then the price of the product should be reduced, as consumers are not getting value for money in that product.”

Another disgruntled social media user wrote: “If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, don’t buy Club.”

Furthermore, it wasn’t just consumers wading into the debate, with form Conservative government minister Jacob Rees-Mogg taking to Twitter to voice his concerns at the move. He said: “Fake chocolate biscuits are sadly not fake news. The Penguin was not too bad, the Club inedible.”

Adding his take on the move, chocolate maker, Giles Atwell spoke to ITV News on the issue, highlighting the fact that cocoa price rises in the past 18 months had prompted manufacturers to consider alternative products from chocolate in their ranges. 

McVitie’s manufacturer, Turkish-owned pladis, issued a statement to the Guardian newspaper on its changes, though it was unable to confirm whether this would be a permanent move.

The company said:  “We made some changes to McVitie’s Penguin and Club earlier this year, where we are using a chocolate flavour coating with cocoa mass, rather than a chocolate coating.”