Ivory Coast cocoa supply hits a two-year inventory high

Ivory Coast cocoa supply keeps piling up: farmers have shipped 2.14 million metric tons of beans to port since October 1, 18% more than the same point a year earlier. The volume has pushed ICE-monitored inventories to a two-year high of roughly 3.42 million bags, and prices have followed the supply down.

ICE's September 2026 cocoa contract slipped to $5,734 a tonne, down 0.83% on the week from $5,782, as traders priced in the ample volume moving through Ivorian ports. Inventories touched 3,436,742 bags on September 4 and stayed elevated near that level into mid-September.

Barry Callebaut, the world's largest cocoa processor, said on September 2 that the global market is well supplied and better positioned to manage swings than during the 2023-24 El Niño crisis, when cocoa prices hit record highs.

Record cocoa stockpiles today are sitting next to a smaller Ivory Coast harvest for next year.

A tighter outlook for the next crop

Early surveys of the 2026-27 Ivory Coast season, which opens this month, show below-average cherelle formation on cocoa trees. Heavy rainfall and high humidity have raised disease risk on both the current and coming crops, the country's main vulnerability given it supplies roughly 70% of the world's cocoa.

Analysts now put the 2026-27 Ivory Coast crop at around 1.8 million metric tons, down 18% from the roughly 2.2 million tons produced in 2025-26, a gap that sits awkwardly against today's record inventories.

What chocolate makers are watching

Chocolate makers have already cut bar sizes and leaned on substitutes during the price spikes of early 2026, changes that could persist even if supply keeps easing this season.

Markets will watch how October and November rains land in Ivory Coast, the period when cocoa trees normally flower for next year's crop, before drawing firmer conclusions about where prices head next. The country's export pressures echo those facing Philippine banana growers, another tropical crop squeezed between rising demand and limited new land. For now, the record inventories are keeping chocolate makers' near-term costs in check, even as the outlook a year out looks tighter than the current glut suggests.