Dairy Milk’s sharing bar will decrease in weight by ten per cent, but the price will stay the same.

Mondelez, whose 2021 net revenues were around 29 billion dollars, will shrink the 200g Dairy Milk down to 180g while keeping the price steady. They have blamed a combination of rising production costs and inflation for the decision.

In a statement, the company said, “We’re facing the same challenges that so many other food companies have already reported when it comes to significantly increased production costs – whether it’s ingredients, energy or packaging – and rising inflation.”

The decision comes as inflation puts severe pressure on consumers, particularly Irish households living in poverty. New data for March 2022 looking at food and drink prices showed a rise of inflation of 6.7 per cent compared to March 2021. Staples like milk, meat, and coffee are the worst affected products.

This has become a common symptom of inflation over the past forty years and has been dubbed “shrinkflation”. 2,529 products tracked by the Office for National Statistics have decreased in size over the past five years. The theory goes: if a chocolate bar gets smaller but the price stays the same, that is a form of inflation because you are paying more for each bite.

Toblerone, owned by Mondelez, spaced out its signature triangles so that there was less chocolate in each bar. Mars has shrunk its sharing bags of Maltesers by fifteen per cent. Doritos have downsized from 200g a packet to 180g. Peperamis have lost 2.5g and are now 22.5g and a big box of Coco Pops has been reduced from 800g to 720g.

A partner at the firm Simon-Kucher, James Brown who advises companies on pricing strategies, said the downsizing made sense because people “don’t say: ‘I want to 120g of chocolate.’ We say: ‘I want a chocolate bar’,”.

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