'If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit'...go elsewhere! Club and Penguin change their recipe due to cocoa cost

Recent cost-cutting measures have significantly impacted the biscuit brand's ingredients. 

A recent rapid rise in the price of cocoa has led the confectionary giants to change their recipe to avoid increasing their prices.

Read More: When £100 buys half a basket of shopping, it’s no mystery why young people feel Britain is rigged against them

Read More: Marks & Spencer urgently recalls much-loved chocolate over potentially fatal risk

Poor cocoa harvests due to extreme weather conditions over the last three years have affected key cocoa growing countries such as Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

Unusual rainfall and high temperatures saw cocoa prices more than double last year, hitting a record high near £8.20 a kilogram in January, before dropping slightly amid predictions of a more promising harvest and lower demand.

McVities have been forced to change the label of the pack-lunch favourite Club bar, which originally read "If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our Club", it now says: "If you like a lot of biscuit in your break, join our Club".

The confectionary company's owner Pladis said in a statement: "We made some changes to McVitie's Penguin and Club earlier this year, where we are using a chocolate flavour coating with cocoa mass, rather than a chocolate coating."

Pladis sought to assure its customers, adding "Sensory testing with consumers shows the new coatings deliver the same great taste as the originals."

Whilst McVities is striving to keep the price of their biscuit bars the same in the wake of spiralling cocoa costs, some of Britain's other favourite chocolate bars have gone up in price.

A 360g box of Cadbury Milk Tray increased by 120 per cent at Ocado, from £2.63 in November 2023 to £5.78.

The price of a Cadbury Christmas Santa Selection Box (125g) at Morrisons was up from £1.50 to £2.75, an increase of 83 per cent.