Amid rising vanilla prices, some Canadian bakers and ice cream shop owners say they may have to significantly reduce their use of the staple ingredient.
“We are just trying to manage costs in other ways, but it is getting very difficult with vanilla pricing where it’s at now. And there could be the potential that we could no longer serve vanilla if prices go too much higher,” Billy Friley, the owner of Calgary’s Village Ice Cream, told CTV Calgary.
From 2004 to 2014, the vanilla market went through a decade of excess supply and a prolonged slump. It has dramatically gone in the other direction since, with the cost of the staple ingredient surpassing US$600 per kilogram. A single bean is now valued at about $9, whereas before it was valued at around $3.
Supply shortfalls and a powerful cyclone are partly to blame for the price hike, according to Aust & Hachmann Canada, a worldwide distributer of natural vanilla products.
Cyclone Enawo, which struck the town of Antalaha in the heart of the vanilla region of Madagascar on March 7, 2017, damaged up to 30to 40 percent of the year’s overall harvest.
Madagascar has rebounded and continues to be the world’s dominant supplier of vanilla, accounting for more than three quarters of the global stock of the beans. Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Mexico trail closely behind.
“We’ve re-examined what we use higher quality vanilla in,” said Tanya Pridge, who runs a bake shop in Calgary and has decided to include less vanilla paste in her sweets.
“Generally you won’t be able to tell the difference and it won’t affect the quality. The one thing that we do use the higher quality vanilla in is our butter cream,” Pridge said.
A kilogram of silver is US$535.64 -- currently cheaper than pure vanilla.
