Cocoa Producer News

Ivory Coast began construction on Tuesday of a four-year, 560 billion CFA franc ($962 million) project to build a second container terminal and widen the canal leading to its main port in the commercial capital Abidjan. Among the busiest in sub-Saharan Africa, the port serves Ivory Coast, French-speaking West Africa's largest economy and the world's top cocoa producer, and is also a gateway for landlocked nations to the north. China Harbour Engineering Co Ltd was awarded the construction contracts for both projects with the bulk of the cost covered by a loan from China's Eximbank. Construction of the new container terminal, which will be managed by consortium led by France's Bollore, will last 48 months and cost 409 billion CFA francs.

Ivory Coast weather over the past week indicated mixed prospects for its main cocoa crop, with overcast weather and no rain potentially hurting development of plants in most regions, but good sunny conditions in others. In the world's top cocoa producer, farmers said that sunshine was crucial in this period of development of the main crop to help the growth of flowers and small pods now emerging on trees. The size of the crop will depend on the number of flowers that turn into small pods. The marketing season for the Ivorian mid-crop, which began on April 1, is tailing off, meanwhile. In the western region of Soubre, at the heart of the cocoa belt, farmers reported no rainfall and a lack of sunny spells for a second consecutive week.

Ivory Coast is aiming to boost its seed cotton output to 600,000 tonnes in the next two years, the head of the country's industry regulator said on Thursday, marking the latest advance for a sector recovering from a decade of war and political crisis. The country - the world biggest cocoa producer - was also one of West Africa's major cotton exporters, with an annual output of about 400,000 tonnes, before a 2002-2003 civil war split the country in two and halved production. Output has been growing over the past five years thanks to government and donor efforts. "We were able to reach 400,000 tonnes during the season that just finished," Malamine Sanogo, the managing director of the Cotton and Cashew Council, told Reuters.

OT Africa Line (OTAL) announced some changes to its North Europe – West Africa services. These take into account various factors including a slight downturn in overall trade volumes, civil unrest in certain countries and improved availability of roll-on, roll-off multi-purpose tonnage. OTAL’s RoRo service is resuming its nine day frequency utilising six vessels on a 45-day round-trip schedule. This has been made possible by the return to the service of Rokia Delmas and Rosa Delmas. Both ships have recently been employed in support of the military action in Iraq and during their absence, the service was reduced to an eleven-day frequency utilizing three RoRo vessels.