With over 75% of vanilla grown in Madagascar, “the main reason for the high price is that there was a cyclone (on the island) last March which damaged a lot of the plantations," Julian Gale, a commodities analyst for IEG Vu, told the BBC.
He added: “Despite hopes that the price would have eased by now, it's still holding on the high side because demand is so strong” – currently costing around $600 per kilo, making it more expensive than silver.
As well as ice cream, vanilla is also used in many sweet foods and alcohol, and companies claim to be paying “30 times more for the extract than they did in previous years.”
Julie Fisher, founder of London-based ice cream parlour, Ruby Violet, told the BBC that she has taken vanilla off the menu in her London-based outlets “’for the foreseeable future’ because she can't afford the thousands of pounds it would cost. “