What Does a Cocoa Grind Make? Asia Just Set a Record

The Pantry Pulse, 17 October 2026.

Cocoa futures closed higher on Thursday after Asian and European processors reported grinding more beans in the third quarter than expected. Asian grindings rose a record 29 percent on the year, and European grindings rose 3.2 percent when a decline had been forecast. Grinding turns roasted cocoa beans into cocoa liquor, which is then pressed into the butter and powder used for chocolate and baking cocoa. The market reads grind figures as a sign of demand.

Grindings Beat the Forecasts

The December New York cocoa contract closed up 96 points, or 1.67 percent, and the December London contract closed up 45 points, or 1.04 percent, according to a Barchart market report carried by Yahoo Finance. The Cocoa Association of Asia reported third-quarter Asian grindings of 233,767 metric tons, against expectations of a 15 percent gain. The European Cocoa Association reported 348,215 tons, where a 3.9 percent decline had been expected.

Salah-Eddine Bouhmidi, head of markets at IG Europe, notes that European volumes for the first nine months of the year were still 3.1 percent below the year before, so the recovery has yet to broaden. A quarter earlier, European grindings fell 4.6 percent to 316,366 tons while Asian grindings rose 25 percent to 224,646 tons, as the earlier report on why makers' costs lag cocoa set out. Shares in Barry Callebaut, the Swiss chocolate manufacturer, rose 7.7 percent on Thursday, according to IG.

Weather had already lifted prices. On Wednesday, New York cocoa reached a one-month high and London a six-week high on reports that heavy rain in the Ivory Coast had cut off roads and damaged bridges, slowing deliveries to ports and keeping farmers from harvesting just as the harvest began. Early surveys of the 2026/27 Ivory Coast crop show below-average cherelle formation and poor pod development, with an average estimate of 1.8 million tons, down 18 percent from about 2.2 million in 2025/26. The Barchart report cites the US Climate Prediction Center's view that the El Niño that emerged in September will likely be one of the strongest in more than 75 years. An El Niño typically brings warmer, drier conditions to West Africa that stress cocoa trees and lower yields.

Other figures pull the other way. ICE cocoa inventories climbed to 3,588,033 bags on Thursday, a 2.25-year high. IG describes the higher ICE stocks as a cushion against an immediate shortage. Cargill, the second-largest cocoa processor in the world, reported mark-to-market losses on cocoa for the quarter ended 31 August, which Barchart reads as a sign it struggled to pass higher cocoa costs on to customers. Ivory Coast farmers shipped 2.18 million tons to port between 1 October 2025 and 27 September 2026, up 19.8 percent, according to Bloomberg data cited in the report.

What a Grind Turns a Bean Into

A cacao bean is cleaned, dried and cracked, and the pieces left once the shell comes off are the nibs. Under the US standard of identity, chocolate liquor is the food made by finely grinding those nibs. It holds between 50 and 60 percent cacao fat by weight. Statistics Netherlands calls this cocoa mass the fundamental semi-manufactured cocoa product, made by roasting and grinding the kernels of the beans.

Pressing then splits that paste in two. The fat pressed out of the liquor is cocoa butter. What remains is the cocoa cake, which is ground again to make cocoa powder. The federal standards define breakfast cocoa as the food made by pulverizing what remains after part of the cacao fat has been removed from ground nibs, with at least 22 percent fat left in. Plain cocoa holds less than 22 percent fat and no less than 10. Statistics Netherlands classes liquor, butter and powder as semi-manufactured goods, raw materials for the food industry rather than products sold to eat as they are. Chocolate, in the same classification, is the finished product.

Dandelion Chocolate works differently. As the bean-to-bar chocolate guide explains, its melangers crush nibs and sugar together under granite wheels and run for a few days, grinding and conching in one machine. The cocoa or cacao guide covers what separates one cocoa powder from another, fat and alkali among them.

Third-Quarter Grindings, Worked Back

The Barchart report gives this year's tonnage and a percentage change, but not last year's tonnage or the volumes the forecasts implied. Working back from the published percentages gives both.

Three readings follow from the table. Together the two regions ground about 12 percent more than a year earlier, against forecasts that, taken together, implied a rise of under 3 percent. Asia supplied about 52,600 tons of the roughly 63,300-ton increase, or about 83 percent of it, and its share of the two-region total rose from about 35 percent to about 40 percent. Each region beat its forecast by a similar tonnage, about 25,400 tons in Asia and about 24,000 in Europe, so the surprise was split almost evenly even though the percentages look very different. Because the reported percentages are rounded, the worked-back volumes may be off by several hundred tons.

From the Grind to the Kitchen

Two products sit at different points along the chain from bean to bar. Valrhona Cocoa Powder (shop Valrhona Cocoa Powder) comes from the powder side, the cocoa cake ground fine once the butter is pressed out. Valrhona's Guanaja 70% fèves (shop Valrhona Guanaja 70% Fèves) are finished chocolate, a step further along the chain from the grind. The cocoa brownies recipe puts cocoa powder to work, and the chocolate bar percentage guide explains what the number on a bar counts. Visitors to the shop at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek can ask staff questions, and products ship to the continental U.S. from theambrosianpantry.com.

Europe's grind fell in the spring quarter and rose in the summer one. The rain-slowed Ivory Coast harvest now under way will shape how many beans reach the grinders next.

Sources & Further Reading

• Rich Asplund, "Cocoa Prices Rise as Chocolate Demand Improves," Barchart via Yahoo Finance, 15 October 2026
• Salah-Eddine Bouhmidi, "Cocoa price outlook: Three factors supporting the recovery ahead of Christmas," IG, 16 October 2026
• 21 CFR 163.110, Cacao nibs (Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School)
• 21 CFR 163.111, Chocolate liquor (Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School)
• 21 CFR 163.112, Breakfast cocoa (Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School)
• 21 CFR 163.113, Cocoa (Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School)
• Statistics Netherlands (CBS), "The Netherlands is the world's leading exporter of cocoa products," 2026
• The Pantry Dispatch guide to how bean-to-bar chocolate is made
• The Pantry Dispatch cocoa or cacao guide
• The earlier report on why chocolate makers' costs lag the cocoa market