The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
Bloomberg
Strong processing profits probably kept cocoa processing at high rates in Europe and Nor-th America, according to a Bloomberg survey.
Grinding in Europe, the top-consuming region, likely rose 2 percent in the fourth quarter to the highest for that period going back to 2001, the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 14 traders, brokers, processors and analysts showed. In North America, processing probably gained 2.5 percent to the highest for that quarter since 2014, according to the median estimate.
Processing profits have been hovering around the highest in more than a decade in Europe and while a measure of grinding profitability has been in decline recently in the US, it’s still at an elevated level compared with the previous 10 years, according to KnowledgeCharts, a unit of Commodity Analysis. The European Cocoa Association will release the data on Wednesday and the Washington-based National Confectioners Association the day after.
European processing probably rose to 360,352 metric tons in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. Survey responses ranged from no increase to a gain of 4 percent.
In North America, processing is seen at 118,982 tons, with responses varying from a 1 percent gain to a 4.9 percent. The total for both regions would still be lower than the previous quarter.