Nigeria Cocoa Prices Rise As Marketing Of New Main Crop Starts

Nigeria’s cocoa prices are rebounding with the marketing of the 2011-12 season (September through February) main cocoa crop now underway in the country, traders said Monday.

In the key southwest cocoa region, graded cocoa price stood Monday at 420,000 naira to 430,000 naira ($2,781-$2,848) a metric ton, according to a trader in Akure, capital of Ondo state, the biggest cocoa producing area in Nigeria.

This is the highest cocoa price in the region since July when farmers, traders and exporters traded the midcrop cocoa, he said.

Harvesting of the 2011-12 season main crop cocoa began in Nigeria’s two cocoa-producing regions at the beginning of August.

The midcrop cocoa, which is usually smaller in size and weighs less than the main crop, sold at NGN380,000 a ton in July in the southwest but prices are now up at NGN420,000 to NGN430,000 in the region.

“It’s normal for cocoa prices to rise when marketing of the main crop cocoa starts every year. Traders and exporters are very active during the main crop cocoa period buying, selling and exporting a lot of cocoa,” he told Dow Jones Newswires.

And in Cross River state, the largest cocoa producer in eastern Nigeria, graded main crop cocoa sold Monday at 405,000 naira to 410,000 naira ($2,682 – $2,715) a metric ton up from NGN390,000-NGN400,000 last week, Godwin Okwu, a trader in Ikom said. Ikom is the largest cocoa-producing area in Cross River state.

Ukwu said cocoa prices are usually lower in the southeast than the southwest because of the high cost of transporting cocoa (from the southeast) to the ports in Lagos for export.

He said “too much rainfall” is now hampering the sun-drying of beans, adding “cocoa prices will likely rise once the rainy season gives way to a dry weather in October,”

Nigeria, the world’s fourth-largest cocoa producer after Ivory Coast, Ghana and Indonesia, produces around 240,000 tons a year.

Dow Jones Commodities News

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