Dedicated to cocoa completely and accurately

• Cadbury is going Fairtrade on the Cadbury Dairy Milk brand. They intend to convert its other brands as soon as possible. They will have their certification by summer. They are one of two chocolate companies in the UK to do so. The other is Divine Chocolate.
• Mars has been investing in cocoa sustainability for 30years.
• Nestle joined the UTZ Certified Good Inside Cocoa Program in February 2008, they claim they are working toward sustainability in mainstream cocoa production.
• Good news for Cameroon who just reported exporting 147,976 metric tons of cocoa beans between August and January of the current 2008-09 season, up from 133,071 tons in the same period of the previous season.
• As the dollar weakened and (once again) speculative buying has resulted in the U.S. cocoa futures rallied 3.8% yesterday.
• It was a very active May cocoa on ICE Futures U.S. rose $89 and settle at $2,334 per ton.
  

March 11th Cocoa Market

• Close Change Range
  March $2,331 +89 $2,331-$2,331
  May $2,334 +89 $2,274-$2,350
  July $2,328 +91 $2,269-$2,338
  
• Ivory Coast continues with poor quality. There are plenty of beans but most are too small and/or are poor in quality. The main season is coming to an end and exporters are continuing to reject.
• Ivory Coast has declared 672,753 metric tons of cocoa for export from Oct. 1 through March 3, Down 19% from the same period one year ago.
• The cocoa farmers are having to sort and sift just to meet the minimum norms.
• So for the moment the famers are very concerned with the market dropping. The Farmgate prices have already fallen to 400-475 CFA francs (Ivorian currency), or $0.77-0.93/kg.
• Ivory Coast produces an average 1.3 million tons per year of cocoa (
  2,865,980,000 lbs) or 40% of global supply.