Where Has All the Cocoa Gone?

Yesterday, the ICCO released their annual stock survey of European warehouses as of the end of September 2017, showing a yearly decline in stocks of 51,000 tonnes.

picture of cocoa, chocolate

This is in sharp contrast to the ICCO estimate (generally accepted by the industry and most cocoa analysts) that there was a large surplus (335,000 tonnes) in the 2016/17 season. Until the release of this survey, there was no reason to question a large global surplus, especially given a known and certain increase in US licensed warehouse stocks of 106,000 tonnes (to 291,000 tonnes) during that period.

We believe cocoa could reach USD 2,200/tonne during the current quarter.

Where to go from here