Current as of 26 August 2026
This describes the state of things at the date shown, without a claim about which way it is moving next. Checked every three months. First observed: The 2023/24 deficit; the balance turned in 2024/25.
World cocoa supply, demand and stocks
The 2024/25 cocoa year closed with world production a little above grindings — a small surplus after a very large deficit the year before. Stocks are rebuilding from a low base, and the stocks-to-grindings ratio is the number that actually tells you how nervous the market should be.
Three numbers describe the cocoa market at any moment: how much was grown, how much was ground, and how much is sitting in warehouses. The International Cocoa Organization publishes all three quarterly, and its May 2026 bulletin revised the 2024/25 cocoa year to production of 4.723 million tonnes against grindings of 4.628 million tonnes — a surplus of 48,000 tonnes, itself revised down from an earlier estimate of 75,000. End-of-season stocks stood at 1.320 million tonnes, a stocks-to-grindings ratio of 28.5%.
What would make this page wrong
Written before the page went up rather than added afterwards. If one of these has happened since the date above, treat what follows as history.
- The next ICCO quarterly bulletin, which revises the previous season and eventually publishes a first estimate for the current one — these figures are routinely revised by tens of thousands of tonnes.
- The 2025/26 season closing, which had not been reported when this record was written: the ICCO's May 2026 bulletin covered 2022/23 to 2024/25 and offered no 2025/26 forecast.
- A sustained recovery in grindings, which would show that the demand fall of the deficit years was a response to price rather than a permanent loss of volume.
What stays true when this is over
The stocks-to-grindings ratio is the durable idea here, and it is worth learning once. It expresses inventory as a share of annual consumption, so 28.5% means the world holds a bit over three months of cocoa. A commodity with thin cover reacts violently to bad news because there is no buffer to absorb it, which is precisely why a single flooded season in mid-2026 could move the price sharply after a year of falling. Whenever this record's figures are stale, that relationship will still explain the volatility.
How to read a surplus of 48,000 tonnes
It sounds like a lot and it is almost nothing. Against grindings of 4.628 million tonnes it is roughly one per cent — about four days of world consumption.
That is the useful way to hold these numbers. A surplus of one per cent does not rebuild a depleted inventory; it stops it falling. It took a deficit of roughly ten times that size, in 2023/24, to produce the price event of 2024, and it will take several years of surpluses at this scale to restore cover to comfortable levels.
Note also that the surplus was REVISED DOWN, from 75,000 tonnes to 48,000, between two bulletins. That is normal and it is a warning: these are estimates assembled from national returns, and the direction of the balance is much more reliable than its size.
Grindings are the demand number, and they are the interesting one
Grinding is the industrial step where beans become liquor, butter and powder, and it is measured because it happens in a small number of large facilities that report. It is therefore the best available proxy for demand — better than retail sales, which are fragmented across every market on earth.
What grindings did through the price spike is the part usually left out of coverage. They fell. Buyers cut back, reformulated, and in some categories simply used less cocoa, and regional grinding data through 2024 and 2025 showed declines in every major processing region at various points.
That matters for how the cycle resolves. A market that rebalances because supply recovered has healed; a market that rebalances because demand went away has shrunk. As of the middle of 2026 both had happened and the proportions are not settled.
Where the cocoa is grown, and why concentration is the risk
West Africa supplies most of the world crop, and Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana between them dominate it. Ecuador has grown rapidly and is now a major supplier; Indonesia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil and Peru make up much of the rest.
The concentration is the structural fact underneath every price event in this section. Two neighbouring countries sharing a climate, a set of pathogens and a harvest calendar supply the majority of a crop with three months of inventory behind it. A weather system that crosses both at the wrong moment is a world event.
Diversification is slow because cacao is a tree: a new planting takes several years to bear and longer to reach full yield, so the supply response to a price signal arrives after the price signal has gone.
Widely said, not established
These are claims in circulation about this subject that the evidence available to this catalogue does not carry. They are listed rather than ignored, because a reader who has met them elsewhere is entitled to know where they stand.
- Any 2025/26 production or grindings figure. Private forecasters published surplus estimates for that season through 2026 — one widely quoted house revised from roughly 287,000 to roughly 247,000 tonnes between January and April — but these are house forecasts with proprietary methods, not measurements, and this catalogue does not present them as the season's result.
- Farm-level production for most origins. National figures are compiled from member returns and export data; smallholder yields are estimated rather than measured, and cross-border movement between the two largest producers is a known and unquantified distortion.
Related
What is happening now
- Cocoa supply chainWhere grinding sits in the chain, and who owns the facilities the grindings figure is measured at.
- Cocoa price volatilityWhy thin stocks and inelastic tree crops produce violent prices — the mechanism these figures are the current reading of.
Sources
- Quarterly Bulletin of Cocoa Statistics, No. 2, Volume LII, cocoa year 2025/26 (May 2026) — International Cocoa Organization (ICCO), 2026(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
- ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
How this page is kept current
Dates on this site are advanced by a person who has re-read the record, never by a build step. If the date at the top of this page is old, that is the honest state of it rather than a bug — and the list of what would make it wrong is there so you can check for yourself. See the editorial policy.