The collective fortunes of the Ferrero and Mars families, who own the two biggest private chocolate corporations, surged to $160.9 billion during the same period. This is more than the combined GDPs of Ghana and Ivory Coast, which supply most cocoa beans.
Lindt, Mondelēz, and Nestlé together raked in nearly $4 billion in profits from chocolate sales in 2023. Hershey’s confectionary profits totaled $2 billion last year.
The four corporations paid out on average 97 percent of their total net profits to shareholders in 2023.
numbers as of april 2024
What I’m reading here is both “You can afford to not use slave labor” and much less importantly “You’re overcharging me for chocolate! By a lot!”
Data from Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa and Wikipedia