A Chinese contractor has completed work on the largest cocoa factory and warehouse in the Ivory Coast, the South China Morning Post reports.
The 21ha plant is the second that China Light Industry Nanning Design Engineering has built in the country. The $200m cost has been paid for by the government of China, and will be repaid in cocoa beans.
The completed unit is in the PK24 industrial park on the outskirts of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s economic capital; the other is in the port of San Pedro.
Each plant will have an annual processing capacity of 50,000 tonnes, and they will together be able to store 300,000 tonnes. Forty percent of the output of the plants will be given to China to repay its loan.
Chocolate economics
In 2022, Ivory Coast’s cocoa exports earned it around $3.3bn. Nearly half of the beans went to the Netherlands, Belgium and the US, with China’s imports amounting to just $369,000 worth.
Now that the plants are running, the price of chocolate in Europe and the US is likely to rise.
Kristy Leissle, chief executive of the African Cocoa Marketplace, told the SCMP that the Chinese plants accounted for a fraction of the total production of Ivory Coast and Ghana, but “given the supply constraints of recent seasons, every cocoa bean counts”.
The investment in the plants is intended to allow Ivory Coast to capture a bigger share of the chocolate value chain.
Ivory Coast grows about 40% of the world’s cocoa beans, but the total value of the chocolate industry is around $140bn at present, and is projected to reach $200bn by 2030.
Four chocolate makers control about 82% of the market, and cocoa farmers receive about 2% of the total revenue generated by their products.
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