Companies

The main manufacturers and distributors of cocoa and chocolate products for the chocolate confectionery and other food industries are: Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and Barry Callebaut. Some smaller firms with the same product lines are Schokinag Schokolade Industrie, Guttard Chocolate Company, Blommer chocolate Company and World's Finest Chocolate. As we can see in the graph below, the market of industrial and speciality chocolate is extremely concentrated. As a matter of fact, Barry Callebaut company owns more than the half of the global market.

Leadings companies for the production of industrial and speciality chocolate in 2003

Source: UNCTAD based on the data from Barry Callebaut 

Large international food companies such as Nestlé, Mars, Hershey Foods, Kraft Jacobs Suchard and Cadburys dominate in the area of widely distributed mass-market branded chocolate.

Leadings companies for consumer chocolate in 2003

Source : UNCTAD based on the data from Barry Callebaut 

As far as the consumer chocolate market is concerned, we can see that it is concentrated as well. Indeed, if we add the maket shares of the first three leadings companies we obtain 58 %.

Leadings companies for the manufacturing of industrial and consumer chocolate in 2003

Source : UNCTAD based on the data from Barry Callebaut 

For high quality and prestige chocolate the main companies are Lindt, Nestlé's Peter's Chocolate Company and Valrhona.