Penguins Without Chocolate: How Climate Change is to Blame
Climate disruption forces fundamental changes across food supply chains, with even familiar confectionery products now bearing the consequences of a warming planet.
Popular biscuit brands Club and Penguin can no longer legally be labelled as chocolate in the UK, a shift that highlights how climate pressures reshape ingredient sourcing and product formulations.
Manufacturer Pladis reformulates the snacks' coatings due to cocoa supply constraints, which climate scientists increasingly link to extreme weather patterns in equatorial growing regions.
Climate extremes disrupt cocoa production
The UK sources more than half its cocoa beans from the Ivory Coast and Ghana, countries now experience volatile weather conditions that threatens long-term agricultural stability.
In 2023, rainfall in these regions exceeded the 30-year average by more than double, creating ideal conditions for black pod disease to spread rapidly through plantations and rot pods before harvest.
Early 2024 brought drought conditions, intensified by El Niño, a natural warming phase in the Pacific. Scientists at World Weather Attribution found that the subsequent heatwave was 10 times more likely and 4°C hotter as a result of climate change.
This combination of flooding and drought represents the new normal for cocoa-growing regions, undermining farmers' ability to maintain reliable yields.
Reformulation strategies and regulatory implications
Cocoa prices remain 3 times higher in 2025 compared to 2022, whilst UK imports fell by 10% over two years as prices rose 20%. These supply pressures push Pladis, which owns McVitie's, Godiva, Go Ahead and Jacobs, to reformulate products across its portfolio.
The company replaces cocoa butter and cocoa solids in biscuit coatings with alternative fats including palm oil and shea oil.
While these ingredients offer more stable pricing and availability, sourcing them from Southeast Asia and West Africa introduces different sustainability considerations, including deforestation risks associated with palm cultivation.
The reformulation creates a regulatory consequence. UK food standards require products to contain at least 20% cocoa solids to qualify as "milk chocolate". Club and Penguin bars now fall below that threshold, requiring them to be labelled as "chocolate flavour" instead.
Pladis confirmed the change, saying: "We made some changes to McVitie's Penguin and Club earlier this year, where we are using a chocolate-flavour coating with cocoa mass, rather than a chocolate coating."
The company maintains that "sensory testing with consumers shows the new coatings deliver the same great taste as the originals," though the nostalgic Club slogan, "If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club," now reads more like a historical footnote.
Broader climate impacts on food systems
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), food inflation sits at 3.1% as of March 2025, while chocolate-specific inflation climbs to nearly 17%. These figures reflect broader climate-related disruptions affecting agricultural commodities globally.
Manufacturers face difficult decisions between maintaining product integrity and managing cost pressures, while consumers contend with rising living costs and reduced value in familiar products.
Recent cases of shrinkflation in iconic items such as the Toblerone have already eroded consumer trust.
Whether the reformulated coating tastes the same or not, the truth beneath the wrapper is that Penguin and Club bars no longer meet the cocoa threshold.
This change serves as a tangible example of how climate change alters not just environmental systems, but the everyday products that depend on them.
