The Ebola crisis in West Africa has helped push cocoa prices up by 10 percent since August to more than £1,000 ($1,617) per tonne, and this despite rising production.

Analyst Insight: There are many flavors of supplier networks. And switching costs, especially on the buyers' side, can be high - because these are solutions, not just networks. For these reasons, we will not see the consolidation of supplier networks to nearly the same extent that we see for other types of networks. - Bill McBeath, chief research officer, ChainLink Research