Dairy Milk Goes Fairtrade

A colleague today pointed out an article that ties in nicely with my previous Fairtrade blogs.

Cadbury’s Dairy milk us the UK’s best selling chocolate bar and is set to become Fairtrade certified. Cadbury’s will make the move by tripling the anount of Fairtrade cocoa sourced from Ghana to about 15,000 tonnes a year in the summer. The annual cocoa production in Ghana is more than 600,000 tonnes.

Under the scheme, Cadbury’s will pay a minimum price for Ghanaian cocoa. Interestingly although the market price for cocoa has slipped in recent weeks, it still stands above the price guaranteed by the Fairtrade agreement. Cadbury’s is commited to a £45m initiative over 10 years to help cocoa farming communities across the developing world.

As mentioned in previous blogs Fairtrade sales are bucking the economic trend in the UK. One million households purchased fairtrade products between December 2007 and December 2008. The value of these goods was £500m in 2007 and £700m in 2008.

In order for companies to qualify for the Fairtrade scheme they have to pay a minimum price to their suppliers, plus a premium of $150 (£106) per tonne. On top of this they have to pay a licence fee to the foundation based on volume of sales.

Further Reading

For BBC article click here.

Press release from Fairtrade website.

The International Cocoa Oragnisation website.

Cocoa was in fact the most lucrative commodity of 2008.