THE cost of many festive chocolates has risen by at least 50 per cent compared to last year, new research shows.

A report by Which? has exposed some of the worst inflation across different grocery products.

It found that items in the chocolate category were some of the hardest hit, rising by 15.3 per cent in November — almost twice as much as overall supermarket food and drink inflation, which stood at 8.3 per cent.

At Asda, Green & Black’s Classic Miniature Bar Collection rose from £3.59 on average in 2022 to £6 this year.

Nestle’s Dairy Box Medium Chocolate was £3.35 but had increased to £5.25.

At Sainsbury’s, Matchmakers went from £1.26 to £1.89. Tesco saw its Terry’s Chocolate Orange Minis Bag rise from £1 to £1.50.

While the rising cost of cocoa and sugar has been blamed for rises, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda reaped more than £4 billion in profits in the last financial year.

A Sainsbury’s spokeswoman said: “We have invested millions into keeping prices low on the products we know our customers buy most often and the cost of these items have stayed well below the headline rate of inflation.”