For years, buying cocoa mostly meant buying West African cocoa. Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana still supply around half of the world's beans, and most European grinders are built around them. This season is a reminder of what that concentration means: when the Gulf of Guinea has a poor crop, the whole market feels it. Here is why more buyers are adding a second, eastern origin to their mix, and what cocoa from Beni and Kivu in DR Congo can and cannot do for them.
The 2026/27 picture: the deficit is back
At the end of October, StoneX reversed its July forecast of a 25,000 t surplus and now expects a global cocoa deficit of about 64,000 t for 2026/27, after a record surplus of 494,000 t in 2025/26. The broker sees Côte d'Ivoire at 1.75 million t (-14.6%) and Ghana at 580,000 t (-17%). Port arrivals confirm a slow start in Côte d'Ivoire: 122,453 t between 1 and 25 October, 43% less than a year earlier.
Prices have not reacted strongly yet. ICE New York cocoa for December settled around 5,450 USD/t at the end of October, held back by ICE certified stocks at a two-and-a-half-year high. For buyers, that makes this a calm moment to look at where next season's beans will come from, before the market does it for them.
Why concentration is a risk
When most of the world's cocoa grows in one region, one region's problems become everyone's. This season several of them come together in West Africa: cloudy, wet weather that favours black pod disease, the risk of El Niño, and an Ivorian farmgate price cut to 1,200 CFA francs per kg for the main crop, against 2,800 last season, which leaves farmers with less money to look after their trees.
A second origin will not replace West Africa. But a few containers a year from a different growing region spread the risk, and give a buyer something to fall back on when the main origin disappoints.
What eastern DR Congo brings
- A different growing region. Beni and Kivu lie in the Albertine Rift, around 3,500 km east of the Ivorian and Ghanaian cocoa belts, with their own weather and their own crop risks.
- Smallholder cocoa, checked at origin. Our office and warehouse in Beni weigh, sample and check the moisture of every lot before we commit to it.
- Traceability from the start. We collect the origin and plot data needed for the EU Deforestation Regulation when we buy, not afterwards.
- Flexible delivery points. Depending on the lot, we sell from Kampala or Dar es Salaam up to delivered Antwerp or Felixstowe.
The honest trade-offs
Congolese cocoa is not a like-for-like swap for Ivorian beans, and buyers should know what they are taking on:
- Smaller volumes. This is a niche origin. Across coffee and cocoa, MD Trade ships one to two containers a week.
- Longer lead times. Beans travel more than a thousand kilometres overland before they reach a sea port.
- Variable quality. Fermentation and drying practices differ between farmers, which is why we sample every lot and send pre-shipment samples.
- Changing conditions on the ground. Roads and security in North Kivu change through the year. That is the main reason we keep our own people there.
How to start
The simplest way to test a new origin is one container: agree the quality, the delivery point and the documents, check the pre-shipment and arrival samples, and judge the result in your own factory. You can read how the beans get to Europe in From Beni to Antwerp, meet our representative Elvis and see what we supply for the EUDR in our EUDR checklist.
Trade buyers who want to see current lots can request access to the MD Trade Market, or write to us at info@MDTrade.eu. More about our origins.