Conseil du Café-Cacao Reaffirms Fixed Farmgate Price Stability as Processing Mills Expand in San Pedro Port Zone

SAN PEDRO, CÔTE D'IVOIRE — The Conseil du Café-Cacao (CCC) has held its quarterly stakeholder review at the Port of San Pedro, affirming that the guaranteed farmgate price of 1,850 CFA francs per kilogram will remain strictly enforced across all rural buying cooperatives throughout the main crop harvest.

Director-General Yves Brahima Koné announced that joint compliance taskforces composed of gendarmerie units and cocoa inspectors have seized non-compliant trucks and revoked operational licenses for three speculative export brokers who attempted to discount farmer payments.

Meanwhile, construction work on five industrial cocoa grinding plants in the San Pedro industrial zone has reached 85% completion. The new factories will add 160,000 metric tonnes of annual bean processing capacity, reinforcing Côte d'Ivoire's position as the world's largest grinder of semi-finished cocoa butter, cake, and liquor.

The council emphasized that expanding domestic grinding capacity shields the national economy from volatile raw commodity pricing on the London and New York futures markets.