Cocoa futures have climbed to a record peak of US$11,800 per tonne amid mass shortages and poor harvests across West Africa.
Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Cameroon, which together produce over 75% of the world's cocoa, “have witnessed severely reduced crop yields due to factors such as erratic weather, tree disease and a lack of investment”, said Trading Economics analysts.
Cocoa prices have surged more than 150% in 2024, “driven by the worst shortage of cocoa beans in decades amid poor harvests in key West African producing countries", they added.
Yet consumers continue to sate their collective sweet tooth despite soaring prices.
According to the data, so-called grinds, where cocoa is turned into butter and powder used in confectionery, fell around 2% in Europe and edged down by 0.1% in Asia during the first quarter from a year earlier. Processing in North America ticked up nearly 4%.
However, dealers were expecting up to 6% declines in Europe and 8% declines in both Asia and North America.
The grindings numbers are “nowhere near the deterioration we needed to end this rally,” senior commodity analyst at ArrowStream said in a Bloomberg interview. “It’s crazy how resilient those numbers were.”