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Speaker 1: Consistently rising prices of the cacal bean is making chocolate

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Speaker 1: tears look for cheaper alternatives. So a new study shows

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Speaker 1: the price of cacao, the key ingredient and everyone's favorite

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Speaker 1: sweet treat, are now double what they were in twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty three. So the confectory giants like Hersy's and Cabri

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Speaker 1: are researching lab growing and genetically modified versions of the

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Speaker 1: plant to make our chocolate. So Mike Renfrey as a

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Speaker 1: man who knows and loves his chocolate. He's the head

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Speaker 1: chocolate maker at Raglan Chocolate. He joins me, Now have Mike,

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Speaker 1: what a hell of a job you've got.

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Speaker 2: It's a pretty good job.

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Speaker 1: Actually, Bet, how expensive is cacao right now? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely right. It is double what it was back

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Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three. But that's really the you know,

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Speaker 2: that's the commodity price. The real world for most of

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Speaker 2: us is different. It's only the big multinationals that are

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Speaker 2: really directly linked to that commodity price.

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Speaker 1: Year prices go up, but will they go down?

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Speaker 2: They are down now, yep. I think we're talking about

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Speaker 2: two thousand and two dollars a kiload back in twenty

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Speaker 2: three and they've come back to about They went up

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Speaker 2: to say twelve dollars a kilo and back a year

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Speaker 2: twenty four to twenty five, and then back to about

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Speaker 2: five dollars a killer. I think now, so that's that's

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Speaker 2: that's what's happened. It's come back. But there's a real

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Speaker 2: lag in the system between you know, those buying and

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Speaker 2: buying the commodity and those actually putting product on the shelf.

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Speaker 2: And I think there's a bit of a belief that

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Speaker 2: those those big guys, you know, Montalez who's cap were

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Speaker 2: in that they will probably want to maintain that high

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Speaker 2: price in the retail for as long as they can.

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Speaker 1: So maybe the maybe maybe the crisis is over, or

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Speaker 1: maybe the crisis is just normal market fluctuations. But here

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Speaker 1: they are they're talking about lab grown beans, Frankenstein beans

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Speaker 1: or something like that. What do you think about the

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Speaker 1: idea of lab grown beans and we'll that Will the

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Speaker 1: market accept them?

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I don't actually think there's a need

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Speaker 2: for it. I think the supply situation is exaggerated. Where

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Speaker 2: the blame is put. It's put you know, it's simple

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Speaker 2: supply chain supply and demand that demands grown and the

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Speaker 2: supply has been poor. The reality is that the supply

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Speaker 2: has been extremely affected by weather in the last several seasons,

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Speaker 2: so that the great big warehouses of of beans in

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Speaker 2: West Africa, which is the greatest supply base, and the

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Speaker 2: warehouses in Europe and so forth to supplying these big

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Speaker 2: multinationals have been depleted. So so they've been reluctant to

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Speaker 2: buy those highest pride prices, but eventually they have to

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Speaker 2: buy to meet their market commitments, driving that price extremely high.

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Speaker 2: We're a little isolated as a special chocolate maker. Our

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Speaker 2: prices were never anywhere as low as those commodity prices,

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Speaker 2: and now they're not as high as those commodity prices were.

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Speaker 2: So we're buffet to some degree, a little bit separate.

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Speaker 1: And I'm picking that Raging Chocolate is a maker of

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Speaker 1: very fine, high end chocolates. Would never use lab grown

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Speaker 1: beans just for the look.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, no, It's one of the few ways that

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Speaker 2: we can differentiate ourselves from those big courts though.

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Speaker 1: Guys, Mike, thank you and enjoy your marvelous day at work.

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Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live

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