Tucking into a box of Quality Street or Celebrations is a Christmas tradition.<\/p>\n
But as this year\u2019s supply arrives in supermarkets, it is becoming clear that the Grinch has already struck and made the tubs of the confectionery lighter.<\/p>\n
Someone has also taken a bite out of Toblerone, with 20g shaved off its chocolatey peaks, reducing a 360g bar to 340g.<\/p>\n
The latest round of shrinkflation means anyone prising the lid off the Quality Street box may be underwhelmed by the number of sweets \u2013 as 50g has been lost from the weight, taking it from 600g to 550g.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at 500g, there\u2019s less to celebrate about tubs of Mars\u2019s Celebrations, which weighed 550g in 2024.<\/p>\n
Toblerone, owned by the US food company Mondel\u0113z, is no stranger to shrinkage. In 2016, it faced a backlash after it widened the gaps between the chocolate bar\u2019s distinctive triangular chunks instead of putting the price up. Two years later it reverted to the original shape.<\/p>\n
Chocolate was once a relatively inexpensive indulgence, but the soaring cost of cocoa has pushed prices up. There have been consecutive poor harvests in west Africa, including Ghana and the Ivory Coast, where more than half of the world\u2019s cocoa beans are harvested.<\/p>\n
Andrew Moriarty, a cocoa expert at commodity analysts Expana, said price increases were linked to still-high ingredient costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThough raw material prices like cocoa butter have come down nearly 45% over the last 12 months, they remain substantially higher than in the years prior to 2024,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to many of the retailers I speak to, suppliers have come for a few increases in recent months on the back of more aggressive costings done earlier in 2025.\u201d A Mondel\u0113z International spokesperson said any changes to its product sizes were a \u201clast resort\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, we are continuing to experience significantly higher input costs across our supply chain, with ingredients such as cocoa and dairy costing far more than they have done previously.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeanwhile, other costs, such as energy and transport, also remain high. This means that our products continue to be much more expensive to make.\u201d As a result it had made \u201ca small weight reduction to some of our Toblerone bars\u201d.<\/p>\n
Nestl\u00e9 said that every year it set the pack sizes and RRPs for its Quality Street products based on a number of factors including the cost of manufacturing, ingredients and transport.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson added: \u201cWe think our pricing is competitive with a good variety of choice for Quality Street fans. Final prices are at the discretion of individual retailers.\u201d Mars was also approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tucking into a box of Quality Street or Celebrations is a Christmas tradition. But as this year\u2019s supply…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,16838,2190,179,18,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-51267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-christmas","10":"tag-cost-of-living","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}