Olam, Cargill, Sucden, are among the big winners of the new cocoa harvest campaign in Côte d'Ivoire, to the detriment of local exporters.

Between October 1, 2019 and the end of February, the Singaporean Olam, the American Cargill, the Swiss Saco, the French Sucden, Touton or Cémoi recovered 861,097 tonnes of cocoa beans from the new harvest campaign, i.e. 52, 4% of total.

Local exporters struggling

Weakened by the fall of the Ivorian leader Saf Cacao, whose activities were taken over a year ago by the Société agricole de café-cacao (SACC), local exporters are struggling.

S3C from the Ivorian-Lebanese Omais family (93,000 t) and SACC (64,000 t) barely survive. At the end of February, a crisis broke out between national exporters and multinationals. The former reproach the latter for siphoning off all the Ivorian cocoa, leaving nothing to the national actors, who, despite the financial resources, cannot buy beans.