Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative Ltd. (CAMPCO) will on Monday reduce the procurement price of wet cocoa beans when it buys the produce from farmers by ₹ 3 per kg. Also, the cooperative will soon install an advanced machine to increase the production of choco chips at its chocolate factory in Puttur.
The cooperative is one among the principal buyers of wet beans from farmers. It buys about 30,000 quintals of wet beans annually.
The cooperative will reduce the procurement price of wet beans from ₹ 60 a kg to ₹ 57 a kg, CAMPCO Managing Director M. Suresh Bhandary told The Hindu .
The price will be slashed as the yield from wet beans to dry beans has dropped from about 32 % to 29 %. It means, for example, if a quintal of wet beans is dried, the yield, that is the quantity of dry beans obtained, fell from about 32 kg to about 29 kg. But the prices of dry cocoa beans in the open market is now ruling between ₹ 190 a kg and ₹ 195 a kg. If the prices of dry beans were above ₹ 200 a kg, the cooperative would have maintained the same price for wet beans, Mr. Bhandary said.
Usually, the yield from wet beans to dry beans drops when the beans are procured in rainy season due to high moisture content. But this year the yield has dropped in summer. It could be the result of some farmers harvesting cocoa even before completely ripening as the quality of wet beans arriving now is not up to the mark, he said.
Wet cocoa beans arrived for the first time this season a month ago and arrivals will peak in the next two months. The next crop season commences in November.
CAMPCO has been procuring wet beans at ₹ 60 per kg for a month now, while the private players in the market procured them at between ₹ 55 and ₹ 58 a kg.
The price of wet beans hovered at ₹ 63 a kg during the same season last year, he said. He said that the advanced machine for the production of choco chips has been procured from Turkey. The installation process will start at the end of this month. Now, the chocolate factory produced 60,000 tonnes to 80,000 tonnes of choco chips per month. With the installation of the new machine, an additional 250 tonnes of choco chips can be produced per month.
