The amount of cocoa grinded in the second quarter of 2014 on a set of geographic areas that account for 66% of the global grinding (EU-15 plus Switzerland, North America, Equatorial Asia and Brazil) grew by 1.5% over the same period of 2013.

This is a lower figure than expected on the basis of many positive news that had been published about chocolate consumption. The amount of cocoa grinded is usually taken as an indication of the evolution of the consumption of this product, given the difficulty of making estimates more accurate as cocoa is an ingredient involved in numerous products -not only in chocolate- and always in very different proportions (biscuits, breakfast, cereals, yogurts, ice-creams, etc.).

The effect of this evolution has been virtually nil on the market. Neither is having any effect the increasingly better performance of crops in Ivory Coast and Ghana -despite involving 58% of global production- and the continuing decline in the probability that the weather phenomenon El Niño is present in the coming months. Quite the contrary, cocoa price on the London and New York stock exchanges has experienced a further increase which stands at the highest since mid-July 2011 (or from mid-March 2011 if we consider the lower value of the euro today against the pound sterling).

The 1.5% growth is very similar to 1.4% in the first quarter but well below the 4.1% in the fourth quarter of 2013, the first of the season, when the greatest expectations were created. After two-thirds of the international cocoa year 2013-2014, the increase in these four regions is 2.3%.

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