Global Construction Review, the online media outlet of the international organization The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), reported that Chinese company China Light Industry Nanning Design Engineering has finished building the largest cocoa bean factory and warehouse in Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast).
The facility is located in the African country’s largest city and its former capital, Abidjan. (Note: This is the second cocoa plant built by the Chinese company in Côte d’Ivoire; the other is located in the port city of San-Pédro.)
According to the South China Morning Post, the Chinese government paid US$200 million to build the new plant in Abidjan and “will be repaid in cocoa beans” — 40 percent of the output of the two plants will be given to China to repay its loan.
The Ivory Coast is the world’s largest cocoa bean producer, producing more than 2 million tonnes a year, accounting for approximately 40 percent of global cocoa production and exports. Cocoa beans is the country’s major export product: in 2022, the Ivory Coast exported US$3.33 billion in cocoa beans, with nearly half going to the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States.
[NOTE: A tonne equals 2204 lbs. or 1000 kilograms, whereas a ton, the more commonly used metric in America, equals 2000 lbs. or about 907 kilograms.]
Ghana and Ivory Coast provide 65% of the world’s cocoa, but most of the profits go to processing companies like Nestle instead of farmers pic.twitter.com/LIgvyofFSt
— Bloomberg Originals (@bbgoriginals) August 5, 2019
Kristy Leissle, founder and CEO of the African Cocoa Marketplace, said: “Buyers everywhere are struggling to secure cocoa supply, and if 50,000 metric tonnes are now going to China instead of Europe or North America, chocolate makers in those regions will feel the loss.” (Chocolate’s main ingredient is cocoa beans.)
Each of the new cocoa bean plants in the Ivory Coast will have an annual processing capacity of 50,000 tonnes, and they will together be able to store 300,000 tonnes.
