Cocoa prices dropped after setting a record

After setting a record of USD 10,559 per ton, cocoa prices decreased by more than 7%, mainly due to many profit-taking sell orders on the trading market.

Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two largest cocoa suppliers globally, are experiencing one of the worst cases in history.

Trader Ecom predicts that Ivory Coast's 2023-2024 cocoa output will decrease by 21.5% compared to the previous crop, reaching its lowest level in 8 years. From the beginning of the crop (October 2023) to April 7, 2024, the amount of cocoa arriving at ports in Ivory Coast is about 1.3 million tons, down 27.4% compared to the same period of the previous crop.

Like cocoa, sugar prices fell for eight consecutive days, reaching their lowest level in 15 months. The reason is because global supply is expanding.

In Brazil, the world's largest sugar supplier, the weather has been relatively favorable recently, with heavy rains in key production areas, helping to improve the outlook for sugarcane output this year from 2024-2025.

In addition, France has pegged the sugar beet area in 2024 at 399,000ha, an increase of 4.9% compared to 2023.

Cotton prices decreased by 2.42% to the lowest level in the past three months due to weakening world demand for US cotton. According to the weekly export report ending April 11, the US sold only 81,500 bales of cotton for the 2023-2024 crop, down 4% from the previous week and 10% compared to the prior 4-week average.

Cotton exports this week were only 274,100 bales, down 25% and 23%, respectively, compared to the previous week and the average of the last four weeks.

On the contrary, coffee continued to be the bright spot of the entire raw material market as it continued to extend its upward momentum yesterday. However, the upward momentum has weakened significantly compared to previous sessions.

At closing, Robusta coffee prices increased 0.71% to USD 3,977 per ton, maintaining a 30-year peak and approaching a record of USD 4,000 per ton. Meanwhile, Arabica coffee prices increased by 0.68%, the highest since September 2022.