The Economist reports that during July, a London-based hedge fund arranged to buy a huge cache of cocoa beans. This is important because the fund actually had the beans delivered to warehouses around Europe, waiting for the right time to resell and profit from market dynamics. And, as the Mail Online notes, it's the largest single purchase of beans in 14 years.
Even before the fund made its move, cocoa prices had been rising, causing choco marketers to either accept slimmer profit margins or--more frequently--increase prices. Nestle projected, late last year, that the UK choco market would not grow in 2010, in part because of higher costs and in part because of consumers' ongoing concerns about the economic outlook. Nestle has a brief overview of its UK choco manufacturing history here.
Meanwhile, Divine Chocolate (below) has been quite successful in marketing Fairtrade choco sourced from West African beans.
Finally, check out the Times 100 business case study on creating a sustainable choco industry, available in .pdf and mp3 formats.
