Cocoa hit a record USD12,900 a tonne in December 2024. By January 2026 it was trading near USD 4,400 – roughly two-thirds below that peak. Yet investment in cocoa alternatives continued. Nestlé, Barry Callebaut, Cargill and others are now testing or commercialising ingredients made from sunflower seeds, grape seeds and cell-cultured cocoa. The emerging opportunity is not to replace chocolate, but to reduce cocoa exposure in applications where authentic cocoa is less central to the product experience.
Chocolate is not disappearing. But manufacturers are starting to reduce their dependence on cocoa where it is not essential. Supply is still concentrated in two climate-exposed countries, so weather or crop disruption can quickly affect costs and availability across confectionery, bakery and snacks.
THE VULNERABILITY THE 2024 CRISIS EXPOSED
Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana together supply more than 60% of the world’s cocoa, within a West African region that accounts for roughly two-thirds of global output. That concentration turns weather, crop disease or a single poor harvest into a global pricing event for an ingredient used across confectionery, bakery, cereals, ice cream and snacks¹. The 2023/24 season closed with a deficit of 489,000 tonnes as production in both countries fell sharply², and cocoa futures went on to peak at a record roughly USD 12,900 per tonne in December 2024.
The recovery since then is less reassuring than the headline surplus suggests. The 2024/25 season swung to a surplus³ – most recently estimated at 48,000 tonnes by the International Cocoa Organization’s May 2026 bulletin⁴ – but global grindings fell by roughly 4.3% over the same period, to about 4.6 million tonnes, as high input costs squeezed processors’ margins.⁵ In other words, part of the rebalancing happened because manufacturers processed less cocoa, not because the underlying supply problem was solved. By early July 2026, prices had partly rebounded to around $5,000 per tonne – still well below the 2024 peak, but rising again on flooding in Ivory Coast and renewed El Niño risk to the 2026/27 crop⁶. Cocoa has now moved through a record spike, a historic crash and a weather-driven rebound inside two years, and that volatility – not any single price level – is what manufacturers are now pricing into procurement decisions.
The business impact has been substantial. Barry Callebaut’s recurring net profit fell 35.9% in FY2024/25, while net debt rose to CHF 4.3 billion as higher cocoa prices increased financing needs. Mondelēz reported a 5.8 percentage-point decline in adjusted gross margin in FY2025, driven mainly by higher raw-material costs and unfavourable product mix. Rabobank describes the broader industry effect as disrupted procurement, squeezed margins and faster reformulation.
For decades, cocoa sourcing was treated primarily as a hedging function. It is becoming a portfolio-strategy question instead: which products genuinely need cocoa, where it is central to the consumer proposition rather than merely providing colour or a familiar note, and how much margin volatility a brand is willing to absorb to keep it. Once that question is asked at individual product level, the addressable market for alternatives extends well beyond the chocolate-bar aisle. Market research that sizes this category around the confectionery aisle alone will keep missing where the volume actually sits.
FROM START-UP INGREDIENT TO INDUSTRIAL SUPPLY CHAIN
Planet A Foods’ growth timeline is the clearest evidence that this has moved past pilot stage. The company’s ChoViva – sunflower seeds fermented and roasted, then blended with sugar and plant-based fats to recreate chocolate’s taste, snap and mouthfeel – was in just over 20 products across 42,000 European retail stores when Planet A raised a USD 30 million Series B in December 2024 to scale production from 2,000 to more than 15,000 tonnes annually⁷. Eleven months later, in November 2025, Barry Callebaut – the world’s largest chocolate and cocoa solutions supplier – signed a long-term commercial partnership with Planet A Foods; by that point ChoViva was already in more than 60,000 supermarkets across at least eight countries⁸. By December 2025 that had grown to more than 70 products in ten countries⁹, and by March 2026, as Nestlé and other manufacturers adopted the ingredient, the count had passed 120 products¹⁰.
Nestlé’s own move is the sharper signal, because of when it happened. The company announced its first fully cocoa-free line – Choco Crossies “Snack Vibes,” built on ChoViva – in March 2026, close to cocoa’s cyclical low, and launched it on German shelves that April¹¹. Barry Callebaut’s commitment was signed even earlier in the price cycle, in November 2025. Neither company was reacting to a live price spike when it committed capital. Both were built during the trough – which argues for a hedge against volatility rather than a reaction to a single expensive harvest.
Retail proof arrived from a market with no prior cocoa-free chocolate culture at all. Japan’s AEON took ChoViva-based products into thousands of Topvalu stores in September 2025 – Planet A Foods’ first market entry outside Europe – following an earlier limited biscuit launch that June¹². By late January 2026, the series had sold more than a million units¹³. Retailers moving through private label may in fact commercialise cocoa-free formulations faster than national brands: they control shelf placement, pricing and packaging communication directly, and they carry the margin exposure to cocoa inflation themselves.
WHERE SUBSTITUTION LANDS FIRST – AND WHERE IT DOESN’T
The industry’s early application choices show where this scales fastest. Barry Callebaut now positions ChoViva across coatings and fillings for wafers, nuts and fruit, biscuits and snack bars, rolls, ice cream and cereals. It says the ingredient can be used as a one-to-one replacement in relevant applications without additional capex. Rabobank independently expects early adoption to concentrate in compound applications such as coatings, fillings and inclusions rather than standard or premium chocolate bars. That creates a clearer ladder of adoption.
Coatings, inclusions and fillings sit at the bottom of that ladder, and are likely to scale first. In a coated nut, a biscuit or an energy bar, chocolate is only one component of the full sensory experience alongside texture, nuts, cereals and other flavouring – which means the alternative does not need to replicate a premium bar perfectly, only to perform well within the finished product. Bakery, ice cream and snacking formats follow closely behind, for the same reason: they let a manufacturer introduce a cocoa-free line extension – as Nestlé did with Snack Vibes – without touching the recipe of a flagship product.
Private label and value-tier confectionery form the next rung, and may end up doing more consumer education than any brand-led launch. Retailer brands compete heavily on price and are more directly exposed to cocoa inflation, which makes a cocoa-free coating with predictable input costs an easier internal case than it is for a premium manufacturer. Standalone mass-market bars sit higher up the ladder again, because taste, aroma, snap and appearance are far more visible when the entire product is meant to replicate chocolate – and because labelling regulations in markets including the EU reserve recognised chocolate descriptions for products meeting specified cocoa-content thresholds, forcing cocoa-free products to build their own category language.
Premium, origin-led chocolate sits outside this ladder altogether, and substitution there is genuinely unlikely. Bean origin, fermentation method and cocoa percentage are part of what makes a premium bar premium; removing cocoa removes the provenance the product is sold on. The more durable outcome is not one chocolate market but two: chocolate sold on provenance and craftsmanship, and chocolate sold on familiar taste and texture delivered through a more stable ingredient system. The near-term commercial opportunity is therefore more likely to sit in compound applications where chocolate is one component of the finished experience rather than the product itself.
SIZING THE OPPORTUNITY CORRECTLY
The size of the global sunflower seed market is the wrong number to use for this opportunity. Most sunflower seeds will continue to be used for oil, animal feed and conventional agricultural applications, entirely unrelated to chocolate. Cocoa-free chocolate instead requires proprietary fermentation and roasting processes, specialty fats, flavour and texture systems, and product-specific application testing – the value sits in the intellectual property and industrial capability that converts a widely available agricultural input into a functional ingredient, not in selling more commodity seed. That is a food-technology and ingredient-solutions market, not an extension of the oilseed market – and it is precisely why Planet A Foods’ partnerships and production build-out, not the underlying commodity, are the metric worth tracking. Market research anchored to the oilseed market will overstate the opportunity by an order of magnitude; the insights that matter come from partnership announcements, installed production capacity and live product counts.
SUNFLOWER IS NOT BETTING ALONE
The market is developing through more than one technology route. Rabobank groups cocoa-free innovation into three pathways: lab-grown cocoa for longer-term supply security, fermentation-based alternatives for nearer-term reformulation and scale, and upcycled ingredient systems for cost-sensitive,¹⁴ high-volume applications. Barry Callebaut’s sunflower-based ChoViva sits within the fermentation route; other manufacturers and ingredient companies are backing different technologies and feedstocks, including grapeseed-based and cell-cultured approaches¹⁵. The competitive race will be decided by sensory performance, cost, production scale and how easily each platform integrates into existing manufacturing lines.
Regulation is now accelerating the sunflower route specifically. The EU Deforestation Regulation will apply to large and medium-sized operators from 30 December 2026, increasing the traceability and due-diligence requirements attached to cocoa entering the EU¹⁶. Sunflower grown on existing European farmland carries none of that cocoa-specific audit burden. Barry Callebaut also cites up to 65% lower CO2 emissions for ChoViva versus traditional chocolate, based on an EY study of its standard recipes. For sourcing teams planning 2027, the combination of compliance simplicity,¹⁷ cost stability and lower exposure to cocoa supply volatility strengthens the case for evaluating alternatives in suitable applications.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR PORTFOLIO STRATEGY
The practical output of this shift is not a single reformulation decision but a screening exercise, run at SKU level rather than category level.
Four variables do most of the work in that screen:
- Cocoa’s share of total product cost;
- How central authentic cocoa is to the consumer proposition versus how much of the role is colour, sweetness or texture;
- The technical ease of partial or full substitution; and
- The reputational and regulatory exposure created by reformulating.
The products that clear that screen first are unlikely to be iconic bars – they are more likely to be coatings, inclusions and fillings already under margin pressure from cocoa inflation. Hybrid formulations that reduce cocoa intensity without eliminating it may prove just as important commercially as full substitution, and manufacturers evaluating¹⁸ either path should treat this as a supply-chain and portfolio question owned above R&D, not an isolated innovation project. The market insights that support that call have to be built at SKU level, not read off a category-level forecast.
Cocoa is not being displaced; manufacturers are building alternatives around it. Rabobank is explicit that cocoa remains¹⁹ the backbone of chocolate, while alternative ingredients can add resilience, cost stability, sustainability and flexibility²⁰. Barry Callebaut is commercialising that proposition around stable supply, margin protection and applications that can be integrated into existing manufacturing. The strategic shift is therefore not away from cocoa altogether, but toward giving manufacturers a second ingredient option where authentic cocoa is not essential to the consumer proposition.
The decisive question is no longer whether chocolate can be made without cocoa. It is where consumers care enough about the cocoa to pay for it – and where they simply want the experience.
Understand issues. Remove guesswork. Embed insights
1. 2025–2026 Cocoa Season Outlook: Challenges and Sustainability in Focus. Farmforce. 2025.
https://farmforce.com/articles/2025-2026-cocoa-season-outlook-challenges-and-sustainability-in-focus/
2. August 2025 Quarterly Bulletin of Cocoa Statistics. International Cocoa Organization. August 2025.
https://www.icco.org/august-2025-quarterly-bulletin-of-cocoa-statistics/
3. November 2025 Quarterly Bulletin of Cocoa Statistics. International Cocoa Organization. November 2025; and ICCO Cuts Global Cocoa Surplus Outlook for 2024/2025. Ecofin Agency. November 2025.
https://www.icco.org/november-2025-quarterly-bulletin-of-cocoa-statistics/
4. Latest News – May 2026 Quarterly Bulletin of Cocoa Statistics. International Cocoa Organization. May 2026.
https://www.icco.org/category/latest-news/
5. Ivory Coast slashes farmgate cocoa price by 57%. African Agribusiness. March 2026.
https://africanagribusiness.com/ivory-coast-slashes-farmgate-cocoa-price-by-57-percent/5453/
6. Cocoa. Trading Economics. July 2026.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/cocoa
7. Planet A Foods Series B Financing. Planet A Foods. December 2024.
https://planet-a-foods.com/press/articles/iu2xm6bhnoemm82tzrmnsh5t/planet-a-foods-series-b-financing
8. Barry Callebaut and Planet A Foods Partner to Pioneer Sustainable Chocolate Alternatives Without Cocoa. Barry Callebaut. November 2025.
https://www.barry-callebaut.com/en/about-us/media/news-stories/barry-callebaut-and-planet-foods-partner-pioneer-sustainable-chocolate
9. ChoViva is one part of the Planet A Foods mission to create sustainable ingredients. Planet A Foods. December 2025.
https://choviva.com/mission
10. Nestlé adopts ChoViva as confectionery giants embrace cocoa-free solutions. Food Ingredients First. March 2026.
https://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/nestle-choviva-cocoa-free-chocolate.html
11. Nestlé launches cocoa-free chocolate with ChoViva. FoodNavigator. March 2026
https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2026/03/10/nestle-launches-cocoa-free-chocolate-with-choviva/
12. Japanese Retailer Aeon Brings Planet A Foods’s Cocoa-Free Chocolate to Asia. Green Queen. June 2025 – and Choviva in Asia. Planet A Foods. September 2025.
https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/aeon-japan-planet-a-foods-cocoa-free-chocolate-choviva-asia/
13. Topics / Choco-ka?: A Cocoa-Free Chocolate Alternative for Valentine’s Day. AEON Japan. January 2026.
https://www.welcome-aeon.com/topics/07_chocobar.php
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https://www.fooddive.com/news/sunflower-power-inside-barry-callebaults-bid-to-win-the-chocolate-alterna/822004/
15. Food Dive, June 2026 – Cargill/Voyage Foods and Mondelēz/Celleste Bio references (as above, source 14).
16. Farmforce, 2025 – EU Deforestation Regulation timeline (as above, source 1).
17. Barry Callebaut Group Full-Year Results Fiscal Year 2024-25. Barry Callebaut. November 2025.
https://www.barry-callebaut.com/en/about-us/media/news-stories/barry-callebaut-group-full-year-results-fiscal-year-2024-25
18. Mondelēz International Reports Q4 and FY 2025 Results. Mondelēz International. February 2026.
https://ir.mondelezinternational.com/news-releases/news-release-details/mondelez-international-reports-q4-and-fy-2025-results
19. ChoViva: a chocolatey indulgence made with sunflower seeds. Barry Callebaut. Accessed August 2026.
https://www.barry-callebaut.com/en-IN/trends-insights/choviva-chocolatey-indulgence-made-sunflower-seeds
20. ‘Beyond the bean’ – confectionery manufacturers look to cocoa-free chocolate. Rabobank / RaboResearch. 15 January 2026.
https://www.rabobank.com.au/news/media-releases/2026/beyond-the-bean-confectionery-manufacturers-look-to-cocoa-free-chocolate
