‘Shrinkflation’: Why your Cadbury’s chocolate bar is smaller than it used to be

Have Cadbury’s chocolate bars become smaller and is this shrinkflation?

Irish consumers are well aware of inflation each time a supermarket trolley of grocery shopping is scanned at the till.

Groceries now cost 5 per cent more than they did this time last year, according to figures from Worldpanel by Numerator released in June of 2026 .

Inflation can be described as a decrease in the purchasing power of your money, resulting in consumers spending more to get the same goods or services.

But what is shrinkflation – inflation’s sneaky younger brother?

Shrinkflation is when a company creates the same product, sells it at the same price, but reduces its size.

Consider a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, one of the most beloved sweet treats countrywide .

In a food label series carried out by The Irish Times in 2018 , the 2018 bar here weighed 55g versus 2026’s 53g.

Meanwhile, we know that its UK counterpart was reduced from 49g to 45g in 2012. In the same year, the company’s 200g bar was cut to 180g in the UK as well.

While the standard Dairy Milk weighs more in this State, the next size up is considerably lighter than the UK’s product, at 110g.

But a statement from Mondelēz International, which owns Cadbury, said: “We can confirm that Ireland’s most popular chocolate bar, the 53g Cadbury Dairy Milk has not been reduced in weight.”

Mondelēz added that its wholesale chocolate prices have soared in recent years on foot of supply disruptions linked to the climate crisis damaging crops in west Africa, the source of most of the world’s cocoa.

Against this backdrop, chocolate inflation has reached dizzying heights, with Eurostat reporting a 17.9 per cent increase in the cost of chocolate in the EU in 2025.

Referring to the soaring cost of chocolate, the company said: “As a food producer, we are continuing to experience higher input costs across our supply chain, with ingredients such as cocoa and dairy costing far more than they have done previously.”

The company said that reducing product sizes “is a last resort for our business”. However, they acknowledged that they have made some reductions to Cadbury’s products in recent years.

“As a result of this difficult environment, we have had to make the decision to slightly reduce the weight of some of our Cadbury products over a number of years so that we can continue to provide consumers with the brands they love, without compromising on the great taste and quality they expect.”