The traditional Easter egg will contain a very bad surprise for Italians this year. The prices of the typical Easter holiday product have in fact recorded very strong increases compared to last year, to the point that the price lists have risen on average by +24%, after the +15.4% recorded in 2023. The complaint comes today from Codacons , which carried out a study comparing last year’s retail prices with current ones. «By analyzing the price lists of the main large-scale retail chains, we discover that all Easter egg producers have increased their retail prices – explains the association – Comparing the best-known brands that fill the shelves of Italian supermarkets and hypermarkets every year, average price increases of 24% emerge, which in some cases exceed 40% for certain branded chocolate eggs.
For example, the Kinder Gransurpresa children’s egg, which has a fixed price throughout Italy regardless of the point of sale, in the 150 gram version goes from 9.99 euros last year to the current 11.99 euros, with a net increase of 2 euros (+20%). The highest-end eggs for adults, with milk or dark chocolate, and weighing between 320 and 365 grams, reach more than 18 euros per piece, with increases of more than 33% compared to the 2023 price lists. For some eggs of well-known brands specializing in chocolate, the price increases even break through to +40%”.
«It’s better, so to speak, for products aimed at children: the prices of eggs linked to cartoons, games, famous people, TV series, etc., increase on average by +16.7% compared to last year» Codacons notes. On average, the production of Easter eggs in our country exceeds 31 thousand tons per year, with a turnover estimated at over 300 million euros in 2023: «this means that, for the same purchases, the increases will weigh for approximately 72 million euros in consumers’ pockets – the association calculates.
The cause of the heavy increases for Easter eggs is the cocoa crisis: for this raw material the prices currently exceed the record reached in 1977, reaching 6,000 dollars per ton, to which is added the increase in the last year of the +72% for sugar and 52% for cocoa butter – explains Codacons – The producers, therefore, have passed on the higher production costs to final consumers, through increases in public price lists which will make Easter more bitter for everyone ».
What is going on? The surge in cocoa prices weighs on the price of chocolate. «Climate changes are impacting the environment and the territory in such a devastating way that they are also having effects on retail prices, and even thousands of kilometers away from the places affected by meteorological phenomena». This was stated by the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine (Sima) intervening on the cocoa crisis which led to a record in international prices.
«At the basis of the surge in prices of some raw materials are the climate changes that are affecting our planet – explains the president Alessandro Miani – Periods of prolonged drought, increase in average temperatures associated with sudden and intense rainfall, profoundly alter the environment and the territory, decimating agricultural production with cascading effects on the supply of certain materials and, consequently, on retail prices”.
«And this is exactly what is happening in some of the main cocoa producing countries, such as Ghana and Ivory Coast, which according to estimates by the International Cocoa Organization alone represent 60% of global production – continues Miani – Here the crops, which require a balance between sun and rain, are threatened by long periods of drought followed by torrential rains that create floods and facilitate the spread of viruses such as Cocoa swollen shoot virus disease (CSSVD), a disease transmitted by a species of cochineal which leads to the death of plants and which, in Ghana alone, has already affected 17% of all cultivated areas, devastating over 500 thousand hectares of cocoa crops, also spreading to the Ivory Coast”.