Over in Europe, the big decliner is Swiss chocolatier Lindt which has trimmed its sales guidance due to weaker consumer demand. It is cutting the price of its chocolates for the festive season and will broaden that out to the rest of its range in January, it said, as it struggles with soft demand in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, plus more price sensitivity among customers. The parabolic rise in cocoa prices a couple of years ago is still having ripple effects in the industry.

It raised input costs for companies, who then had to raise prices to offset the effects, and who also tweaked recipes to lower cocoa content to cope with the upheaval. Lindt does expect some of those pressures to ease off next year, as cocoa prices come down.