Dakar, 5 October 2011: Reuters

West African plantations will churn out huge amounts of cocoa during the early months of this season thanks to near-ideal growing weather, and the full harvest is likely to rival last year's record volumes. The region produced a record of nearly 3.2 million tonnes of cocoa during the 2011-12 season that just ended, raising its share of the global market to about 75% from two-thirds.

The banner crop came despite a war in top grower Ivory Coast and was attributed mainly to ideal weather from the La Nina phenomenon -- a pocket of cooler-than-normal water in the Pacific -- which is expected to return this season. The outlook could further dampen global cocoa futures prices and reinforce emerging expectations for a supply surplus during the 2011-12 season, which are slowly replacing earlier predictions of a small deficit.

The International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) said last month it saw a possible balanced or surplus market in 2011 -12, defying the market's consensus for a small deficit. "Good rainfall in West Africa in August and reports of good pod counts suggest the 2011-12 crop could be better than initially anticipated by the market," Rabobank said in a research note.

Officials in West Africa's four main growers -- Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon -- have put out initial forecasts for the crop that add up to nearly 2.9 million tonnes, but they appear to be weighed down by a conservative outlook from Ghana.

Interactive COCOA graphic

NO WAR, NO PROBLEM

The world's top grower, Ivory Coast, is likely to move about the same amount of cocoa to portside warehouses between October and December as it did during the same period of last year's banner crop, exporters estimate. If the nation's plantations continue to get weekly rains broken up by periods of sunshine through mid-November, it will nearly ensure that Ivory Coast's main October-to-March harvest rivals or exceeds last season's record.

Ivory Coast's finance ministry is anticipating a cocoa crop of 1.3 million to 1.5 million tonnes in the full 2011-12 season -- at or slightly below last year's record of about 1.5 million, a source told Reuters last week.

"The weather is still favourable and the plantations have been treated (for pests) much more than in past years," the source said, corroborating information collected by Reuters from farmers in the growing regions of Soubre, Daloa and San Pedro last week.

The industry managed its record output last season despite a post-election civil war that drove many farmers from their plantations and halted exports for three months. The absence of conflict this year could provide a boost.

Ivorian officials are also mulling sector reforms including providing farmers a fixed minimum price for beans, which they hope will revitalize the industry by encouraging investment in plantations in the coming years. In No. 2 grower Ghana, which posted the most dramatic increase to production last season to more than 1 million tonnes from just over 632,000 the previous year, officials appear to be playing it safe.

The country is banking on output of 850,000 to 900,000 tonnes of cocoa during the 2011-12 crop, but "it could be more, depending on the weather", Noah Amenyah, a spokesman for regulator Cocobod, told Reuters.

Ghanaian officials have attributed the dramatic increase in output in the 2010-11 season largely to good weather and government efforts at improving farming techniques and incentives. Analysts have said the country may also have received more than 100,000 tonnes of smuggled beans from war-stricken Ivory Coast. Smaller producers Nigeria and Cameroon both anticipate significant increases this year.

"I am looking forward to our national output hitting a new record of 250,000 tonnes this season," said Jerome Mvondo, general manager of Cameroon's Cocoa Development Authority (SODECAO), adding that output could rise further in 2012-13 due to improved husbandry methods. The country yielded about 202,000 tonnes of cocoa in the 2010-11 season, up 18 percent from the previous season.

Michael Ndoping, general manager at Cameroon's National Cocoa and Coffee Board (NCCB), declined to give a forecast for 2011-12 but said output "could be much better this season if the weather is good".

In Nigeria, where reliable output figures are hard to come by, farmers said they were upbeat about the 2011-12 season due to the weather. The Cocoa Association of Nigeria, which estimates output of around 300,000-350,0000 tonnes per year, said production could increase by 10 to 15 percent this year as plantations mature and farmers embrace new husbandry techniques. Nigeria's government puts annual cocoa output above 400,000 tonnes, while the ICCO estimates around 240,000 tonnes.

Ends --

Reuters - for Commodities Now.