Sky-high cost of top ice cream flavouring is hardly plain vanilla

Nairobi

THERE'S nothing plain about the vanilla market.

The price of the bean used to flavour everything from ice cream and chocolate to cola and pastries more than tripled in the past year as output slipped and quality suffered. That should have been a boon for top producer Madagascar, the island nation off Africa's southeast coast. Instead, the government is imposing measures to improve supply and quality to protect its market share.

At a time when Nestle SA and Whole Foods Market Inc are using more natural flavours in food products, vanilla demand i…