Cocoa prices fell to a 2024 low

Cocoa prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange continued to fall, falling to their lowest level since February 2024. The decline was triggered by strong shipments to ports from Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s top producer, signaling better-than-expected supply prospects for the market, Bloomberg reported.

Cocoa prices fell as much as 2.7% on Monday. They are now about 60% below their record high set in December last year.

The decline comes amid expectations of a larger global surplus driven by improved production and weaker demand.

Analysts said the recent pace of arrivals partly reflects higher carryover supplies from the previous average harvest, which has helped push up prices for farmers.

There is also some production change, with about 110,000 tonnes of Ivorian shipments that were supposed to come from other African countries now arriving at Ivory Coast ports.

Traders are keeping a close eye on West African shipments as farms in the region continue to recover from poor harvests that sent prices soaring to record highs, according to Bloomberg.

Ivorian bean arrivals at ports have topped 100,000 tonnes for three straight weeks, underscoring the steady momentum of shipments. They are now close to last year’s pace after a slow start to the season that began in October.

Andrew Moriarty, senior manager of cocoa analysis at Expana, said the market had expected such a high rate of arrivals. However, he predicts that this pace will slow down in the coming weeks and will start to match last year’s total arrivals in the first quarter of next year.

He added that, according to surveys, this year’s tree harvest is not much better than last year’s, and the main harvest may even be slightly worse than a year ago, due to the dry weather that occurred a few months ago.

This could potentially affect the Ukrainian market in the future. However, this downward effect will also be noticeable in Ukraine with a delay (in a few months), when the current stocks purchased at high prices will be exhausted.

In 2024, Ukraine spent 47% more foreign exchange on cocoa imports and products from it than in 2023. The total amount of imports amounted to 504.8 million US dollars.

Tags: prices, cocoa