Chocolate business

Why Cocoa Prices Rose, and What Makers Do

By Oliver BennettPublished October 15, 2026Updated October 15, 202612 min read

Cocoa prices rose because West Africa harvested too little cocoa two seasons running. Weather, disease and old trees cut the crops in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and the 2023/24 season ended with a deficit of 492,000 metric tons by the ICCO’s latest estimate. The ICCO monthly average more than quadrupled between January 2023 and January 2025, fell by more than two-thirds by March 2026 as the harvest recovered, and had come back to about $5,900 per metric ton by September 2026.

For a chocolate maker the swing lands on working capital: the beans or couverture you pay for before sales bring money in. Budget at more than one cocoa price, and get each supplier’s pricing terms in writing.

Raw materials are one line in the plan for how to start a chocolate factory, which covers capacity, equipment and the other costs. More planning guides are in the business section.

How the ICCO price is measured

ICCO is the International Cocoa Organization. According to ICCO’s statistics page, its daily price is the average of the nearest three active futures months on the London and New York exchanges, taken at the London close. Monthly averages of that price, as of October 12, 2026:

The latest daily price on the same page was $5,759.07 on October 9, 2026.

The monthly peak and the futures record

January 2025 is the highest monthly average in the public series, which runs from 2005. A different measure is often quoted as “the record.” On April 19, 2024, the nearby May 2024 futures contract reached an all-time high equivalent to $12,567 per metric ton in London and $11,878 in New York, and both markets closed the month 15% lower, according to ICCO’s market review for that month.

The London figure is a conversion. Cocoa in London trades in pounds per metric ton, as the exchange’s contract specification shows, and the ICCO reports it in dollars.

One is a single contract’s peak on one day, the other a monthly average of a daily price, so the two can’t be compared directly. When a supplier or a news report cites a cocoa price, check which of the two it is before you put it in a budget.

Why prices rose in 2023 and 2024

Two seasons in a row ended in deficit, and the second was far deeper than the first, after poor harvests in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. The ICCO counts a deficit as the net world crop minus grindings, so a deficit means stocks were drawn down to keep the grinders running.

Two deficits in a row

The ICCO publishes its season balances in quarterly bulletins and revises them as data come in. The estimates for 2023/24 grew deeper with each revision:

In the May 2026 bulletin notice, 2023/24 production stands at 4,362,000 metric tons against grindings of 4,810,000, leaving stocks equal to 26.4% of a year’s grindings. In August 2024, when its estimate of the ratio stood at 27.9%, the ICCO called it “a 45-year low stocks-to-grindings ratio.”

The ICCO’s own explanation hasn’t changed much since the first forecast. Its February 2024 bulletin notice expected the top producers to “feel the detrimental effect of unfavourable weather conditions and diseases,” added that “old trees in these countries are producing with lower yields,” and said the low availability of beans had pushed prices up. By August 2024 the list was weather, aged trees, pests and diseases, and the ICCO’s summary was that “cocoa demand outstripped global supply.”

Weather and El Niño

The weather problem was erratic rain. The World Bank’s April 2024 Commodity Markets Outlook put the 2023/24 drop down largely to erratic rain in Côte d’Ivoire in the second half of 2023, which it linked to El Niño, and to disease in both countries. The two countries together accounted for 55% of global cocoa supplies, so their losses moved the world balance.

Rainfall extremes explain most of the swing in one country’s yields. A 2026 Harvard-led study in PNAS by Albright and colleagues used district-level production records from Ghana and found that heavy wet-season rain and dry-season drought together explain 68% of the year-to-year variation in yields. The same study notes that El Niño years typically bring less rain to West Africa. Its model covers Ghana only. Ghana’s beans as a flavor origin are covered in cocoa origins compared.

The weather stayed against the crop into the next season. ICCO’s December 2024 review pointed to hot temperatures and less rain, especially in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and to the onset of the harmattan. It warned that without better weather “a fourth consecutive deficit may likely occur.” That deficit didn’t come: 2024/25 ended in a small surplus.

Disease and old trees

Swollen shoot is the disease with the clearest numbers, and they come from Ghana. A 2023 review in Viruses by Ameyaw and colleagues, researchers at the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana, puts its prevalence at over 30% in Ghana in the third national survey. The virus cuts yields and kills trees, and it is managed by cutting out infected trees.

For tree age, and for Côte d’Ivoire, the data are thinner. In April 2024 the ICCO noted that there were no reliable statistics on cultivated area, tree ages, yields or the spread of swollen shoot in either country, and that the market had to wait for pod-counting surveys.

How much each factor weighed is still open. The PNAS authors list aging trees, gold mining, smuggling, reduced fertilizer access and low pollination among the proposed causes of the West African shortfalls, and write that the weight of these factors against climate “remains uncertain.”

Smuggling and fixed farmgate prices

Both governments set the price farmers receive, once per season, and when the world price runs far above it, beans cross borders. In Côte d’Ivoire the Conseil du Café-Cacao sets a guaranteed farmgate price, and the government commits to paying farmers at least 60% of the CIF price. The agriculture minister, quoted in Fraternité Matin in March 2026, traced that price from 1,500 CFA francs per kilogram in 2023 to a record 2,800 for the 2025/26 main crop.

In Ghana, COCOBOD sets a producer price for each season. A new law, the Ghana Cocoa Board Act, 2026 (Act 1182), gives farmers at least 70% of the realized gross FOB price, as the Ghana News Agency reported in September 2026.

The PNAS study ties the gap between the two prices to smuggling. In the 2022/23 season, it says, cocoa was smuggled out of Ghana to Côte d’Ivoire and Togo, possibly driven by high international prices and relatively lower farmgate prices in Ghana. Smuggling moves beans from one country’s records to another’s. It lowers Ghana’s recorded output without necessarily changing how much cocoa the world harvests.

Côte d’Ivoire also tightened its own market during the spike. The World Bank’s April 2024 outlook reported that the country was halting forward sales and restricting how much stock processors could hold.

What happened in 2025 and 2026

Supply recovered. The 2024/25 season ended in a small surplus, the monthly price fell to $3,241.49 in March 2026, and by August it had nearly doubled from that low.

The ICCO’s August 2026 bulletin notice puts 2024/25 production at 4,733,000 metric tons, up 8.5%, and grindings at 4,649,000, down 3.3%, for a surplus of 37,000 metric tons. The same notice says the Secretariat has “temporarily withheld production and grindings data for the 2025/26 season,” so there is no official balance for the current season yet. In November 2025 the ICCO had noted that higher prices encouraged farmers to reinvest.

The fall was fast. Cocoa prices dropped 32% in the first quarter of 2026 from the quarter before, according to the World Bank’s April 2026 Commodity Markets Outlook, citing favorable weather in West Africa, particularly in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, which together account for around 60% of global output. The stocks-to-grindings ratio for the season had climbed back to 32%, against a long-term average of 41%. In April the World Bank forecast a fall of 51.3% for 2026 as a whole and named a possible El Niño as a risk to that forecast. That was an April forecast; the rebound came after it.

Farmgate prices followed the world price down in Côte d’Ivoire. On March 4, 2026, the government set the mid-crop price at 1,200 CFA francs per kilogram, 1,600 below the main crop, and the minister cited a collapse of about 70% in international prices since December 2025. On September 1, 2026, Fraternité Matin reported that the 2026/27 main crop price stays at 1,200.

Ghana went the other way. From September 25, 2026, its producer price rose from GH¢41,392 to GH¢42,400 per metric ton, or 71.18% of the realized gross FOB value, and COCOBOD’s chief executive said the price should improve returns to farmers and help curb smuggling.

The weather risk the World Bank named has arrived. On October 8, 2026, the NOAA Climate Prediction Center had an El Niño advisory in force and called a strong-to-very-strong El Niño likely through January to March 2027. The ICCO’s August 2026 notice mentions growing concern about weather risks from that El Niño. The tie to cocoa is the rainfall finding from Ghana described above.

How the price reaches a chocolate maker

It reaches you through the grinders and couverture makers in the middle of the chain. A bean-to-bar maker buys beans and carries the price directly. A chocolatier working from couverture pays it through the supplier’s price list, at a delay that depends on the supplier’s contracts.

That middle is concentrated. A 2022 study for the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) describes a small number of companies carrying out two-thirds of the grinding capacity and of the confectionery retail trade.

The largest listed couverture and cocoa processor has said how it handles the price. In a July 2025 results statement, it said it runs most of its business on a cost-plus pricing model and had “priced through the cocoa price increases” to its customers. Buying couverture doesn’t take you out of the cocoa market; it changes when the price reaches you.

Some of the delay comes from forward contracts. In April 2024 the ICCO noted that, because of forward contracting, manufacturers “may currently be covered,” so processing might not drop at once. It dropped later. World grindings fell 4.8% in 2023/24 and 3.3% in 2024/25, and in November 2025 the ICCO said high input costs had constrained processing margins.

Europe’s grind was still falling in 2026. It dropped 4.6% to 316,366 metric tons in the second quarter of 2026 from a year earlier, as Reuters reported on July 16, 2026 from European Cocoa Association data.

Shop prices moved later still. In Eurostat’s consumer price data, prices of chocolate, cocoa and cocoa-based products in the EU were 19.8% higher than a year earlier in May 2025, the peak, four months after the bean price peaked. In August 2026 they were still 1.3% higher than a year earlier, while the bean price was 44% below its January 2025 level. A positive annual rate means shelf prices were still above the year before; it doesn’t mean they were climbing fast.

Managing cocoa price risk in a small business

The tools that fit a small maker are in the supply contract and the product range. This section explains how they work; it isn’t financial advice.

Why futures don’t fit a small buyer

Cocoa futures are built for traders and large buyers. A contract on ICE’s New York cocoa market covers 10 metric tons of beans and settles by physical delivery, and the London contract is also 10 metric tons. At the ICCO daily price of October 9, 2026, one contract represents about $57,590 of cocoa. A business that buys a few tons of couverture a year has no direct match for a 10-ton bean contract.

Smaller routes exist. In an April 2026 presentation, one specialty bean importer lists hedging with futures, buying options as “an insurance policy in a falling market, at a known premium, without the cash flow risk of margin calls,” and selling on a differential, and notes that some brokers allow trading fractions of contracts. Each of them runs through a broker.

Price agreements with suppliers

A fixed price for an agreed volume is the tool closest to a small maker’s scale. The same importer describes setting stable annual prices with its suppliers and customers, and signing buyers into 6 to 12 month purchase agreements that fix volumes, prices and terms. During the rally it paid a differential over the market or over farmgate prices, so its own prices moved more.

Put the same questions to every supplier so the answers line up: how the price is set (cost-plus, a differential to the market, or a fixed list price), how long a quote holds, whether they will fix a price for a set volume over 6 to 12 months, and what happens if you buy less than agreed. Write the date on every quote you keep; the equipment RFQ checklist uses the same discipline for machinery.

Budgeting working capital

Raw material stock (beans or couverture, sugar, milk powder) is part of the working capital a new business has to fund before the first sale. The full list of start-up and working capital items is in the costs section of the factory guide, and what it costs to start a chocolate business breaks them down by business model.

For cocoa, the stock costs more or less depending on the month you buy it. Budget working capital at two or three cocoa prices instead of today’s alone. The table above gives a range that has already happened: the March 2026 low and the January 2025 high. Where your own prices sit inside it is your call, and the supplier’s terms decide how fast any move reaches you.

Recipe and product decisions

The other levers are in the product. Bar weight, inclusions, the cocoa percentage and the mix of products you sell all change how much cocoa each sale carries. Any change to the recipe has to stay within the legal minimums for the name on the label, which are set out in real vs compound chocolate. In July 2025 the large processor quoted above said its customers were “managing end-consumer price increases,” and that is as far as the sourced evidence on product changes goes.

Where to follow the price

The ICCO’s monthly average table and its daily price are public on the ICCO statistics page. The detailed statistics and the full quarterly bulletin are sold by annual subscription.

The quarterly bulletin notices are free and carry the season balance tables used above, at addresses like the August 2026 notice. They come out in February, May, August and November.

The World Bank carries the same ICCO series in its monthly Pink Sheet, in dollars per kilogram: $5.92 for September 2026.

For the weather, NOAA’s El Niño discussion is replaced monthly at the same address; the next issue is due on November 12, 2026.

Sources and open questions

Prices are the ICCO’s public monthly averages as of October 12, 2026, and its daily price for October 9, 2026. Season balances come from the ICCO’s quarterly bulletin notices, which the ICCO says may be revised; the 68% rainfall finding covers Ghana only.

We found no independent source on how fast or how fully a change in the bean price passes through to couverture prices for small buyers. The processor’s and the importer’s statements describe their own businesses.