Cocoa jumps as traders assess global supply-demand balance

Cocoa futures rose as much as 6.6% in New York as prospects for bigger harvests were outweighed by concerns about tight global inventories.

Ghana, the world’s second-biggest cocoa producer, said it would raise the amount it pays farmers by 45%. The move is expected to encourage more exports among growers that have been hoarding beans to await higher prices. It also may enable farmers to make longer-term investments that will bolster future harvests.

Still, uncertainty remains over whether increased cocoa production next season will be enough to fill the hole in inventories created this year, said Judy Ganes, president at J. Ganes Consulting.

“Even if production has a full recovery, you still could wind up with a deficit” because more beans will need to be ground to replenish cocoa butter and powder stockpiles, Ganes said.

The tight supply-demand balance has left both cocoa and coffee futures “very sensitive to weather,” Ganes said.

Meanwhile, arabica coffee futures fell as much as 2%, before clawing back some of those losses. Traders have been weighing concerns about dry weather in Brazil against strong exports from the top producer, which saw a year-over-year increase in shipments in August, exporter group Cecafe said Tuesday.

Brazilian shipments are robust “despite continued reports of logistics issues causing delays out of the main coffee ports,” said Tomas Araujo, a trading associate at StoneX. However, conditions there still look dry until the end of the month, he added. 

Coffee has rallied this year amid dry weather in Brazil and drought in Vietnam — which also just faced a deadly typhoon — raising costs for roasters and consumers. Coffee has become “a climate-driven market,” Andrea Illy, chairman of Italian company Illycaffe SpA, told Bloomberg TV in an interview.