Prices for cocoa beans rose for the sixth session in a row on Friday and are likely to reach a new high in more than 46 years based on trading results, reports MarketWatch.
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“The supply of cocoa beans from West Africa remains limited, and expectations are that their production volumes will will be lower than demand, intensifying,” notes Jack Scoville, vice president of The Price Futures Group.
March futures for cocoa beans rose by 1%, to $5,006 per ton, in trading on the American ICE exchange on Friday .
On Thursday, the price of these contracts was $4,956 per ton, the highest market close since July 20, 1977, according to Dow Jones.
In January, cocoa beans rose in price by 15%, which is the most significant increase since November 2020.
The cocoa bean harvest lags behind the levels of the previous agricultural year, according to a Commerzbank review.
Exporter estimates show that deliveries of cocoa beans to the ports of Cote d'Ivoire, the world's largest producer of this type of raw material, were 35% lower in the period from the beginning of the agricultural year in October to the end of January compared to the same period a year earlier, Commerzbank notes.
This means that the cocoa bean market will be in deficit for the third year in a row, bank experts say.
Remember
Earlier, the Ministry of Finance wrote that prices for Robusta coffee have increased significantly against the backdrop of the conflict in the Red Sea. The March contract on the ICE exchange has risen in price by 11.6% since the beginning of the year and at its peak on January 16 closed at $3,170 per ton. And since the beginning of November, the growth has been 36%.