Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative Ltd. (CAMPCO) will reduce the price of wet cocoa beans being purchased from traders by ₹5 a kg – from ₹50 to ₹45 a kg – from Monday. However, there will be no reduction in the price of beans being procured from farmers, said Suresh Bhandary M., MD, CAMPCO.
CAMPCO is one of the principal buyers of cocoa. It buys cocoa mainly from farmers and partially from traders.
Mr. Bhandary told The Hindu that the cooperative had observed that some traders were now mixing water with wet beans. Hence, the yield from wet to dry beans has dropped. The cooperative will reduce the procurement price for traders for this reason.
Since cocoa procurement season began in April, there has been remarkable increase in the arrival of wet beans to the cooperative compared to earlier years. CAMPCO since last month purchased about 20 tonnes of wet beans a day against six to seven tonnes a day in earlier years. This could be attributed to two factors, he said.
According to farmers, cocoa flowers have not been lost due to scanty rainfall since last month. Hence, there is good crop in this season. Usually, the coastal belt is soaked with heavy rains during June-July resulting in loss of flowers and heavy moisture content in wet beans. This trend has reversed this year.
Secondly, other major multinational chocolate manufacturers who have enough stock of imported dry cocoa beans are not purchasing wet beans in huge quantities. Hence, farmers and traders who otherwise were selling the beans to them are now selling them to the cooperative, he said.
The MD said the annual requirement of dry beans of the cooperative at its chocolate factory in Puttur will be about 4,200 tonnes. It procured about 2,600 tonnes of wet beans annually.
He said that an advanced new machine procured from Turkey for the production of choco chips at the factory was commissioned about a fortnight ago. The machine has the capacity to produce 10 tonnes of choco chips per day. Now, it is producing six tonnes of chips a day.
The existing machine at the factory produced about three tonnes of choco chips a day. Hence, the factory now produced nine tonnes a day. Choco chips are used by food and cosmetic industries.
