SAN PEDRO, Ivory Coast (AP) — Ivory Coast opened a cocoa processing factory Friday that will push its processing capacity to the largest in the world, an official said.
The West African country is already the world's largest cocoa bean grower and exporter. Bohoun Bouabre, minister of planning and development said Friday that the new plant is part of a strategy to diversify the economy and move away from exporting only raw unprocessed resources.
The factory would make Ivory Coast less vulnerable to fluctuations in the commodities markets and will provide much needed skilled jobs for the ranks of the unemployed, he said.
"It's our own industrial revolution," Bouabre said at the inaugural ceremony of the ChocoIvoire factory in the western port city of San Pedro. "With this factory, more half our exports will be processed cocoa and not raw beans."
According to the International Cocoa Association (ICCO), the Netherlands is the world's largest cocoa processor, each year turning out 430,000 tons of cocoa liquor, which is used by confectioners to make chocolate. But once the San Pedro factory is up and running, estimates put Ivory Coast's production at over 440,000 tons annually.
"We can't be the world's biggest producer of cocoa beans for decades while allowing others to process our crops," Bouabre said. "We have the expertise now, there's no reason we can't process our own cocoa."
President Laurent Gbagbo laid the ChocoIvoire factory's first stone two years ago, and set the goal of exporting more cocoa liquor than raw beans by 2010. However, only 34 percent of last year's cocoa exports were refined products, said Desire Dallo, the head of San Pedro's Port Authority.
This year's cocoa harvest was weak, said Gilbert N'Guessan Anoh, president of Ivory Coast's Coffee and Cocoa Management Council (CFGCC). Aging cocoa trees and the outbreak of swollen shoot and black root disease have reduced the council's 2010 crop estimations by 100,000 tons, or more than 10 percent.
The processing plants will provide a much needed boost to the proportion of processed cocoa that is exported. But 30 year high prices for cocoa also mean that, ironically, exports of raw beans are projected to rise 2.5 percent as farmers and cooperatives sell their stocks off, Anoh said.
At a nearby ceremony at the San Pedro port the same day, the 2010-2011 benchmark price was announced for cocoa growers. To their relief, a kilogram of cocoa beans has gone up to 1100 CFA francs ($2.20) to match the price farmers receive in neighboring Ghana. But one farmer said that they never receive the benchmark price anyway.
Rene N'Gnapi Goui, a farmer from the Gagno region of central Ivory Coast said that didn't get more than 700 francs ($1.40) from the buyers who came to his farm last year, and that was with the benchmark set at 950 francs ($1.90).
That's why the government is encouraging the development of farmers cooperatives that pool small growers crops and drive them directly to the port in San Pedro, where they get a better price.
"We gave our farmers 900 francs per kilogram last year, and hope to get them more this season," said Mathieu Houyere, secretary general of the KDD coop, which operates in the same region that Goui's farm is located.
The opening of the ChocoIvoire processing plant could be good news for farmers.
"We want to export the highest quality product possible," said Adnan Amer, president of ChocoIvoire's mother company SAF Cacao. "These days, the fair trade certification is our goal."
Working alongside farmers to improve the quality of the chocolate as well as the working conditions on their farms is essential to obtaining the international certification, Amer said. But it would also mean a purchasing price above the government benchmark.
