Cocoa prices continue to soar high in East New Britain

Cocoa farmer at Malakuna No.4 on the outskirts of Kokopo town using sunlight to dry his cocoa beans before packing in bags to sell (Edwin Fidelis: NBC News)

The price of cocoa in East New Britain province continues to soar as demand for this commodity in the world market grows.

The NGIP Agmark, one of PNG’s largest exporters of cocoa calls it, “Happy Times” for Cocoa Farmers.

Agmark’s Cocoa Production manager, Graham McNally predicts that the price will continue to rise and will remain until 2026.

“Looking at the information that is available to us, I think the cocoa price for this year will remain high. I believe it will also remain high in 2025 for the reasons that there is a low supply in West African Nations management of the marketplace. And also, I believe will run into 2026.

It’s a new price record for the cocoa industry in the province in almost 4 decades”, McNally said.

Last week, the price of cocoa in East New Britain province reached K1, 300 per bag, weighing 63.5 kilograms.

This week, the price has increased by another K300, bringing up the price of a bag of cocoa to K2, 100.

Cocoa bags at the NGIP Agmark fermentary at Talina in Kokopo, graded and ready for export. The Gazelle and Tokiala beans are of high grade and have dedicated buyers in the world market (Edwin Fidelis: NBC News)

Willie Benson, the supervisor at the main Agmark buying depot at Talina has confirmed, the price continues to increase every day.

Not just that. The volume of cocoa they are purchasing at the depot has increased.

“We got up to two tons last month. This month we got four tons, four tons each day”, Mr. Abel said.

Agmark sees it as a lucrative business for the company so as the cocoa farmers.

Agmark said the only concern is to secure more funds, to pay for the cocoa beans that are coming in bulks.

“Our challenge now is to find the funds to finance it. It costs a lot of money to buy cocoa everyday”, McNally said.

Not only dried beans. Wet cocoa beans price has also climbed, where a kilogram is selling at K4.

“We’ve increased our wet bean price to K4 per kilo. This is the highest wet bean price it has ever been. But we may increase it a little further to make a fair price in relation to the dry bean price”, McNally said.

The wet beans may come in smaller quantity, unlike the dried beans.

But when put together, it makes up a significant quantity of dried quality beans that will be processed, bagged and exported.

A clone variety of cocoa tree bearing pods. It's a Cocoa Pod Borer (CPB) tolerant variety with high yields (Edwin Fidelis: NBC News)

Cocoa experts like Graham McNally believe the price hinges on the demand of cocoa in the world market.

Major cocoa producing regions in Africa and South America like Ivory Coast and Ghana have seen a decline in their yields since last year due to unfavorable weather conditions.

They contribute about 80 percent of global cocoa supply.

Unlike Papua New Guinea, the country contributes only about 0.7 percent of cocoa to the world market.

But unless their cocoa trees begin to yield again, then cocoa price in Papua New Guinea will continue to rise.