Tony’s Chocolonely annual results reveal ongoing market tests, and regional gains

Tony’s Chocolonely, the Dutch-headquartered ethically founded chocolate brand, has released its latest annual results amid challenges of the ‘worst mid-crop harvest in a decade’, as it unveils its annual Fair report, writes Neill Barston.

According to the mission-driven business which has continued with its core goal of tackling child labour in supply chains, revenues increased 20% for the 2024/2025 financial year, from €200 to €240 million.

There were some notable regional successes for the business, including a 50% YoY revenue growth in the US, making it Tony’s biggest market, overtaking the Netherlands for the first time. This equated to a total volume growth of 4% for the year amid ongoing market challenges.

As a major marker of core tests in what has proved a volatile cocoa market, net profits were down 4.4% for the year, with conditions in West Africa hit by disease-impacted harvests, climate change, as well as other factors including ongoing illegal gold mining in forested areas of key producing nations of Ivory Coast and neighbouring Ghana.

pic: Tony’s Chocolonely

Cocoa price uncertainty
Significantly, during the past year, cocoa prices had still been at a peak of up to $12,000 at tonne at the start of 2025 on futures commodity markets in New York and London, which the business also acknowledge had been a strong hurdle to navigate. The market has collectively welcomed a downturn in prices during the second half of last year, in which prices are now trading at less than $5,000 a tonne – which has conversely seen concerns expressed at the comparatively steep rate of decline.

As for its annual Fair report, Tony’s observed that its Open Chain system, which has recruited a wide range of retailers and industry partners to operate within its five ethical sourcing pillars, has reportedly made significant gains.

This includes expanding cooperatives it works with in Ghana and Ivory Coast from 11 to 19, which it anticipates will make a significant difference.

Furthermore, as the business noted, through GPS-mapping and registering all new cocoa farms, it has maintained 100% supply chain traceability and demonstrated the strength of the Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS), addressing a record number of cases and initiating remediation steps for every case found.

Moreover, the company highlighted that within its long-term partner cooperatives, child labour prevalence was now below 5%, compared to an industry average of 46.7%.

It also hailed other key progress, with  99.99% of its cocoa reportedly being traceable from verified deforestation-free farms.

The company has also underlined the need to scale impact further through enabling greater levels of local engagement and governance, which it aims to achieve through establishing  legal entities in Ivory Coast and Ghana.

As regards major legislative reforms, Tony’s asserted that it had been fully ready to comply with the EUDR deforestation regulations, and as Confectionery Production has previously reported, it has expressed considerable concern at EU Commission decisions to recommend delaying the landmark laws for a second time – which will now not come into force until the end of 2026 in a weakened form. 

Furthermore, the company also noted there had been similar major hold-ups surrounding  parallel corporate due diligence laws that are before the European Parliament, which have centred on delivery of enhanced human rights, which have also faced commercial lobbying from political groups that have questioned the need and timing of such legislation.

CEO’s optimism
Writing in the foreword to its report, Douglas Lamont, CEO of the group, noted that it was an encouraging signs that it had scaled its impact in sourcing around 27,000 metric tons of beans, representing a 50% increase on the prior financial year. 

He noted that this is reported to have benefitted 33,400 farmers, though he acknowledged that its ongoing mission against child labour remains a key challenge – noting that bringing in new cooperatives and farms to its supply chain had in turn “inevitably resulted in a new wave of child labor cases being found,” which he stated were in the process of being remediated through its established patterns of community engagement.

He commented:  “It’s been a challenging year, but we’ve shown how resilient and effective our model is with strong growth in revenue, volume, profitability and, most importantly, impact on the ground for cocoa-farming families.  

 “We are immensely proud to take yet another step forward in proving the case for a more holistic impact model for the cocoa industry. As an industry, we need to learn the lessons of this recent crisis and make a collective long-term commitment to paying cocoa farmers a higher price. More industry players are already joining Tony’s Open Chain each year, and together, we’re committed to ending exploitation in the cocoa industry to create a fairer, more sustainable future for farmers and chocolate lovers alike,” concluding with a note of thanks to its teams for their ongoing industry efforts.