There is a world shortage of chocolate. People are dying be…

Most of these governments agree to fund AstraChocolate's efforts to research and secure production of highly nutritient chocolate bars. In exchange, AC promises it will deliver X chocolate bars per day to governments once they are produced. 2/

Because edible, safe, chocolate bars need to be approved by national and international regulators, their production and manufacturing takes a while. To ensure a smooth supply chain, AC and other similar companies use factories all around the world. 3/

In Europe, AC uses mainly three manufacturing sites: one in the UK, one in Germany and one in Belgium. In its dealings with governments, AC has promised to deliver 500m of chocolate bars to the EU and 100m to the UK by March 2021. 4/

Now this is a mighty task and there are bumps along the way. Nobody has ever produced edible, safe, super-nutrient chocolate bars at that speed and under that much public scrutiny. So AC and other, similar companies, like Cfacao-BionChoc run into some supply problems. 5/

Following contractual obligations, and courtesy, the Big Cacao companies inform the governments that they would have to reduce supply for some time while they sort out their manufacturing problems. Governments are not happy and ask to find alternative solutions. 6/

In some cases, these exist. In some others, there is no other alternative but to wait a bit longer. The problem is, the more they wait, the more their economies (and, in turn, their capacity to pay for chocolate bars) are going down because people are dying. 7/

Because AC has three plants either in or near the EU, the Commission asks whether the company could not make up for the shortage by evening out supply coming out of all plants. 8/

For example, if the UK factory produces 100 and the Belgian one 20, the EU wants AC to supply the agreed percentage of that total production (120) for the time it takes to fix the problems at the Belgian plant. After all, this was done the other way around in December. 9/

AC says it cannot do that and the British press goes on overdrive accusing the EU of stealing Britain's chocolate bars and saying the Commission has so many requirements for chocolate bars to be edible they deserve to be at the end of the queue anyways. 10/

And there is where my story ends because I do not understand how a UK-based chocolate-maker could possibly refuse to import chocolate bars into Europe when it has signed a contract with the EU saying it would do so UNLESS Britain has decided to nationalise the company 11/

*And yes, I know vaccine research, production and manufacturing has nothing to do with day-to-day goods like chocolate bars. Hence my apocaliptic scenario where people die if they do not have chocolate and chocolate needs to be approved by the relevant authorities etc. Ends/

There is a world shortage of chocolate. People are dying because they do not eat enough chocolate. A company, AstraChocolate, one of the few companies that knows how to manufacture chocolate bars, enters into contracts with governments worldwide. 1/

More from Business

You May Also Like