The organic chocolate confectionery is a new trend due to the increasing demand from the health conscious consumers across globe. This is creating more room for new entrants and established players for product innovation to meet consumer needs and preferences.
Let’s take a dip into the history of chocolate world!
Chocolate and confectionary are the favorite sweet treat panning all ages and races. The chocolate we as consumers are consuming now a days is not the same. It was consumed as a drink called “tchocoatl”, and was favorite of Emperor of the Aztecs (now Central America), Montezuma. The Spanish conquistador, Hernando Cortez, brought the drink in 1529 to the Spain. Later, that drink became popular among Spanish royals and widely throughout the Europe. Origin of the word chocolate remains uncertain. Some linguist say the word chocolate is derived from the word “xocolatl” meaning bitter water. Whereas, Merrian-Webster points that the word chocolate entered English in 17th century, taken from Spanish word which can be tracheked down to the Nahuatl “chocolātl”.
Three centuries later chocolate was used as a non- liquid confection in Europe. In 1847, Joseph fry discovered the chocolate eating bar by adding cocoa, cocoa powder and sugar. Later, in 1849 John Cadbury created similar product as of Fry. But, both the inventions were not palatable. Then Henry Nestle and Daniel Peter created milk chocolate that was more palatable than previous ones. In 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, chocolate making machinery were introduced to the world and there was turning back for the chocolate industry. The Hershey Company, in 1900, installed the chocolate machinery and produced the first wrapped chocolate bar, The Hershey Bar. In this decade over 220 products were launched and alone in U.S. market 40 different candy bars appeared.
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Chocolate that matters you the most.
Types of chocolate was a heated point of discussion in twenties, where chocolate debaters were questioning if white chocolate is really a chocolate or not as it does not contain chocolate liquor. In 2002, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considered it as a confectionary rather than chocolate. Later, the Hershey Food Corp. and the Chocolate Manufacturers Association petitioned the FDA resulting in putting a place for white chocolate in types of chocolate.
Types of chocolate accepted globally are as follows
- Dark chocolate – Containing chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, lecithin, sugar and vanilla
- Milk chocolate- Has all of the above plus milk fats and milk solids
- White chocolate- Containing everything milk chocolate does except chocolate liquor
Meet the “chocolatiers”
Nowadays, companies are focusing on product innovations, flavor innovation, marketing strategies, meeting consumers demand, understanding consumer’s preferences and setting trend in the market. Manufacturers are conducting several manufacturing and promotional activity to increase their outreach amongst the consumers by means of gift packages with chocolates, appealing packaging of products and products targeting holiday and festival seasons by keeping the end user segment in mind.
How demanding chocolate confectionery?
Chocolate confectionary market was valued at USD 123.7 Billion in 2016 and is expected to grow continuously due to decline in price of cocoa beans, growing consumerism and rising expenditure of the consumers is strengthening market growth. The cocoa bean prices in 2017 fell by around 40% as per the Financial Times. Declining price of cocoa bean is anticipated to have a favorable impact on the market growth and the manufactures profit margin. Chocolate confectionary business is steady growing due to changing preferences of consumers for dairy and milk products. This is creating more room for new entrants and established players for product innovation to meet consumer needs and preferences.
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Europe dominates the chocolate confectionary market with market share of above 30%. Europe had 12,315 companies and produced 11.7 million tons of products annually in 2014. Also, in 2015, the production increased by 2.3% reaching 11,736 million ton of product.
Go Organic
Multiple studies reveal that consumption of polyphenol-rich dark chocolate helps in improving cognition improvement and heart health. Growth in organic and free-from food sales are increasing as consumers are more inclined towards health benefit, paying attention on labels, seeking organic and natural ingredient. Organic chocolate are averagely 30% premium than the traditional market.
Several players in the industry are rapidly increasing the promotion of product line that are free of fats such as Trans and saturated fat. Also, considering the consumer growing awareness regarding health and consumption of dairy and milk product is posing vital impact on the manufactures product portfolio. Companies are also promoting products that are free from artificial flavors and sweeteners and those which contains ingredients such as organic wheat flour, rice syrup, cane sugar and corn starch. Producers are understanding the potential of adding organic as a label in their product portfolio. For instance, U.K. based company Green&Black, where green stand for organic and black stands for dark chocolate, they launched their first product with organic dark chocolate bar containing 70% cocoa and still having the same share in their organic line. Organic line of Green&Black is available in 10 flavors, including Maya Gold the Fair Trade Mark awarded by Fairtrade Foundation UK. This trend in growing and reached up to 30 million euro value in Western Europe.
Authors Bio: – Saurabh is an experienced professional with a demonstrative work history in market research industry. He is currently working with Grand View Research is an India & U.S. based market research and consulting company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. He is working as a Senior Research Associate in the Consumer Goods domain. He has over 2+ year of experience in research industry, supported by managing end-to-end syndicate research project, industry analysis, in-depth company profiling, value chain & supply chain analysis, and market sizing, among others. He has worked on diverse topics, such as Milk and Dairy Industry, Organic beverages, Confectionary Industry, Clothing and Apparel Industry and various industry specific studies. He holds Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Pune University, India.
