Main crop to increase by 10% in 2024/25 season but caution remains, CCC says
ABIDJAN, Oct 22 (Reuters) -Ivory Coast's cocoa regulator expects the main crop to increase by around 10% in the 2024/25 season, its senior executive said on Tuesday, adding that caution remains due to heavy rains that are affecting the development of flowers and small pods.
The director of domestic marketing at the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC), Arsene Dadie, said although the first projections for the 2024/25 harvest showed positive signs in September, regions that account for almost three quarters of the country's annual production have been hit by heavy downpours and flooding for the past three weeks.
"The rain destroys the flowers and small pods and accentuates the brown rot, which compromises the main crop," Dadie told Reuters.
Exporters estimated the 2023/24 main crop at around 1.3 million metric tons, compared with the usual average of 1.7 million tons in recent years.
An expert from the International Cocoa Organization(ICCO) said Ivory Coast's cocoa production should reach 2 million tons for the whole season this year, compared with around 1.8 million tonnes last year.
This forecast is still lower than the average seasonal production of 2.2 million tons.
The CCC's director said it was too early to make projections for the whole season, because a number of factors could change everything in a short space of time.
"Today, no one is able to say with any certainty what volume we will produce between April and September 2025... The truth is that apart from the production of the main crop, no one can see anything about the intermediate harvest," Dadie said.
He added that it takes a minimum of 22 weeks, or 6 months, for a cocoa flower to become a mature pod, which means that the cocoa from the mid-crop is not yet visible on the trees.
Reporting by Ange Aboa; Editing by Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by Sharon Singleton
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