For those who prefer their nut spreads with chocolate and hazelnut, a warning for you: your precious Nutella might soon be more expensive and/or harder to find. Hazelnuts, which are mostly grown in Turkey, are not having a good year – the crops suffered from frost earlier in the season, and now prices have increased about 60%.
Italian chocolatier Ferrero, who produces Nutella, is the main buyer of hazelnuts in the world. It takes 50 nuts to make one 13-ounce jar of the chocolately spread, so in the wake of the shortage, Ferrero bought Turkey's main hazelnut supplier, Oltan Group. This was probably a smart move, because according to Businessweek, the world has been consuming more Nutella than ever; in 2013, sales increased 6.4% worldwide, and 5.9% in the US alone.
As of now, you can still buy Nutella in SF for about $3-$5 for a 13 oz. jar, but if you're a diehard addict, you might want to consider renewing that Costco card should the shortage really affect your fix.
[Via: Time; Business Week; photo by owlgray via Flickr]
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