White chocolate is gradually fading from UK supermarket shelves, a new report has claimed.
Manufacturers are ditching white chocolate in favour of an alternative product made from palm and shea oils.
However, a subtle shift in packaging – for instance, changing ‘white chocolate’ to ‘white’ – means consumers might have a harder time distinguishing a genuine product from one with a similar flavour profile.
White chocolate, traditionally made from cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids, must contain a minimum of 20 per cent cocoa butter to be labelled as white chocolate under UK law, according to The Grocer.
However, manufacturers are failing to meet the requirement, and are instead trading cocoa butter for vegetable oils, necessitating a rebrand and packaging changes, the outlet found.
For instance, when McVitie’s swapped cocoa butter for oils in its white Digestives, the brand altered the packaging to read ‘white’ and not ‘white chocolate’.
Despite a recipe change, the price of the white biscuits remained steady at major UK supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Asda, and Tesco.
Nestle followed suit with its white chocolate KitKat Chunky. A spokesperson told The Grocer that the change in description from ‘white chocolate’ to ‘white’ was ‘accurate and compliant’ with the bar’s ingredients of vegetable fats.
The shift might be a result of rising cocoa prices, which reached new heights last year when dry weather struck West Africa, home to most the world’s cocoa farms, and led to a below-par crop.
White chocolate products might be undergoing the shift before milk and dark chocolates because it’s typically made from cocoa butter, which is easier to replicate.
However, the change has impacted some milk and dark chocolate offerings, such as McVitie’s Hobnobs Oaty Cookies.
The Milk Chocolate Flavour Chips and Dark Chocolate Flavour Chips products do not contain enough cocoa mass to be classified as chocolate.
It comes after reports claimed that the price of multiple popular chocolate bars could soon soar in the UK.
KitKats, Yorkie bars, and Aeros are among the sweet treats made by Nestle that might cost consumers more in the near future.
According to Nestle, the change is down to increasing commodity costs, making the production process more costly.
The conglomerate revealed that while it has already raised its prices this year, further increases could be on the way.
In the first quarter of 2025, price hikes in the cost of coffee beans and cocoa saw Nestle raise prices by 2.1 per cent overall.
The price hikes were higher in some markets, according to the Swiss company, with the increases in the double digits.
Because of these growing prices, its sales growth by volume was affected, Nestle said.
Prices of chocolate has risen in general over recent years, with consumers facing an almost 50 per cent increase.
The changes have led some chocolate manufacturers to explore other avenues, including lab-grown chocolate.
Mondelez International, which makes Oreo, Chips Ahoy cookies and Cadbury chocolate bars, poured funding into start-up Celleste Bio earlier this year, according to The Financial Times.
The company uses cell culture technology to grow 100 percent natural cocoa from just one or two beans.
Its aim is to ‘eliminate the industry’s costly reliance on fragile rainforests,’ the company said on its website.
The cost of cocoa has continued to grow to dizzying heights, in a rally which started over a year ago.
At its peak in April 2024, prices for the ingredient surpassed $12,000 per tonne, which was an almost threefold increase from January, the FT reported.
Cocoa prices have soared due to poor climate and bean disease in West Africa – which is home to 70 percent of global cocoa production, which has, in turn, tightened supply.
‘If we don’t change how we source cocoa, we won’t have chocolate in two decades,’ Michal Beressi Golomb, chief executive of Celleste Bio, told the outlet.
With cell-cultured cocoa, the industry ‘won’t need to be dependent on nature,’ she added.
According to Golomb, record prices and global shortages are driving a surge of interest in cocoa alternatives.
‘They’re really worried about having a sustainable, consistent supply of quality cocoa,’ she said. ‘Everybody wants to be part of the party.’
The company, established in 2022, is one of several firms exploring how the industry can become less reliant on traditional cocoa production.
British food ingredients company Tate & Lyle has also partnered with BioHarvest Sciences to develop sweeteners from synthetic plant-derived molecules, the outlet reported.
Other companies are looking at how to create sweet treats with other, natural ingredients.
Last year, confectioner Fazer, which is based in Finland, rolled out a limited edition cocoa-free ‘chocolate’ made from local malted rye and coconut oil.
‘Nearly four years ago, research told us climate change would impact the availability and price of cocoa,’ Annika Porr from Fazer Confectionery’s Forward Lab, told the FT, adding, ‘This year it has become a reality.’
While cocoa prices may be soaring, lab-grown alternatives still face price pressures – and the challenge of making products appeal to consumers.
Celleste Bio aims to reach cost parity with pre-2024 cocoa prices once they are in the market in 2027.
Porr added: ‘Consumers really expect it to taste and feel similar to traditional cocoa. There is still work to be done.’
It comes as some confectioners responded to cocoa price rises earlier this year by pitching more non-chocolate treats.
Hershey’s shipped more non-cocoa treats to retailers last Easter in addition to its traditional Reese’s chocolate bunnies and eggs.
The brand introduced a new six-pack of cookies ‘n’ cream bunnies, offered full-sized Kit Kat lemon crisp bars and mixed Haribo gummy bears with chocolate bars in its assortment bags.
But despite moves to pull back from a heavy reliance on cocoa, large scale confection-makers said they would not be willing to sacrifice taste in order to save money.
‘Tinkering now with the recipes and flavor profiles simply because the input cost for cocoa has gone up, in my opinion, would be a mistake,’ Nestlé Chief Executive Officer Mark Schneider said on call with journalists in February.
