Two weeks ago, WPI published an article looking at the supply-side factors in the cocoa market and what has been driving the massive price rally. With this article, we will look at the consumption and demand-side factors that are likely to influence the market and pricing for LH 2024 and into 2025. Note that the political landscape is set to change dramatically in 2025 as the EU’s Deforestation Regulation is scheduled to come into effect. This monstrous legislation will create a massive burden on the cocoa industry and has the potential to upend global cocoa trade from multiple angles. Primer on Cocoa Demand and Use Obviously, cocoa’s primary use is in the food industry to make products that are otherwise blah into...
Key Takeaways: Dry bulk markets are mixed this week with larger vessel classes seeing strong demand from iron ore and coal while Supramax and Handysize rates remain steady. Congestion at the Panama Canal has eased but forward booking slots are showing signs of bottlenecks as draft levels...
Key Takeaways: Ghana’s new law classifies all cocoa plantations as “protected farms,” which carries significant implications for farmers. Chief among these implications is the inability to switch area under cocoa to other crops, even when economic or biological conditio...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.