UK version of Tim Tam can't be called chocolate

Does Australia now have the upper hand over the UK when it comes to who has the better chocolate biscuit?

High cocoa prices have led to the UK's rival version of a Tim Tam, the Penguin, no longer containing enough cocoa product to be legally labelled as chocolate. The biscuits are now described on their packaging as "chocolate flavoured".

Tim Tam maker Arnott's said while cocoa prices had been a challenge, the Tim Tam recipe had not been changed in response, nor were there any plans to change it.

Rob Temple, creator of social media phenomenon Very British Problems, told the ABC that the Australian biscuit may have cemented its reputation as the better of the two.

"Tim Tams may be superior now. They were probably superior all along to be honest," Temple said.

But they're almost too good, too chocolatey, too nice for British palates. We like lacklustre things.

"All that really matters is that Penguins came first. It's a very British thing to have the original of something, even if it hasn't ever been updated since everyone else around the world made better versions of it.

"Look at our trains, for example. It's just the British way."

Pladis, the company that makes McVitie's Penguins — and Club bars, which are also no longer classed as chocolate — told the BBC it made changes to the two treats earlier this year, replacing a chocolate coating with a chocolate flavour coating.

People in the UK have a choice of biscuit, with Australia's Tim Tams available at major supermarkets over there.

To label a product as milk chocolate in Australia, it must contain at least 20 percent cocoa solids, and no more than 5 percent edible oils other than cocoa butter or dairy fats.

Milk chocolate sold domestically in the UK also must contain at least 20 percent cocoa solids and at least 20 percent dry milk solids.

Cocoa prices have been rising since 2021, and Rabobank commodity markets analyst Paul Joules described the rises this year and last as "aggressive".

Joules said there had been a number of supply issues affecting cocoa growers in West Africa.

"Ivory Coast and Ghana … grow about 70 per cent of the world's cocoa and are responsible for about 70 per cent of the world's cocoa exports," Joules said.

He said ageing trees, crop disease and poor weather had led to poor yields, and farmers were getting out of the industry despite the rallying prices.

He said the farm gate price for cocoa — set by the governments of Ivory Coast and Ghana usually twice per season — may have been set too low.

"So producers weren't getting the signal to really try and ramp up production."

Joules said while the commodity price had started to fall, partly in response to increased production elsewhere, including Ecuador in South America, the retail price of chocolate was expected to remain high for some time.

"If you're looking at the prices we saw pre-cocoa price shock, I don't think we're going to go back to those levels for quite a while, [the] reason being if you look at these big chocolate companies, the way that they're purchasing this chocolate they could hedge up to a year in advance their purchases."

Joules said large chocolate companies had been absorbing high costs "for quite a while" and would "probably be struggling at this point".

"The only real way that they can solve that is either to raise prices at the retail level, or potentially use less cocoa [and] look at alternative ingredients, or reduce the size of chocolate bars," he said.

"We've been seeing a bit of a mix of all of those, and I think that will probably continue even as those commodity prices are moving down, retail prices will be lagged quite a bit behind those."

Not all types of chocolate can be easily changed and still fit within the relevant legal definition, however.

"If you look at the likes of dark chocolate and high-quality white chocolate, that's a lot harder to adjust the recipe at all really so they're where you probably expect to see the bigger inflation," Joules said.