Indonesia must lift cocoa bean output to feed demand - barry

Bareksa.com - World No.3 cocoa bean producer Indonesia should push to more than double output to 1 million tonnes a year to meet Asia's growing appetite for chocolate and demand from local grinders, a senior official at Barry Callebaut said on Wednesday.

The world's biggest chocolate maker has said it expected a balanced global cocoa market in 2013/14 but that global bean output needed to rise to satisfy growing appetite for the treat.

"Indonesia has to pick up and produce more cocoa," Daudi Lelijveld, vice president for cocoa sustainability, said on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore.

"China and India are the next two markets for chocolate products. They are saying: 'give us chocolates, give us chocolates'."

Indonesian cocoa bean output could fall to an eight-year low of 425,000 tonnes in 2014 due to disease and poor weather.

"In the future, it needs to become a 1 million-tonne country. But it's got a long way to go before it gets there," said Lelijveld.

Cocoa processing capacity in Indonesia is being boosted by new facilities being built by multinational companies such as Cargill, Olam International Ltd and Barry Callebaut.

Olam plans to invest $61 million to build a cocoa-processing plant in Indonesia, its first in Asia, while Cargill has commissioned a plant there.

But the expansion is facing a steep shortfall of beans, dealers have said, fuelling a likely jump in imports from West Africa.

Barry Callebaut supplies food groups such as Nestle , Unilever and Mondelez.

Global cocoa prices have risen about 10 percent this year on concerns the El Nino weather phenomenon could hurt supply. (Source : Reuters)