Cocoa futures climbed on Friday, with September ICE NY cocoa up 104 dollars, or 1.84 percent, and September ICE London cocoa up 4 pounds, or 0.10 percent, as a 0.3 percent decline in the dollar index lent support to commodities. Prices are consolidating just above this week's two-week low, which followed reports of exceptional growing conditions in Ivory Coast and Ghana ahead of next month's main crop harvest. Cumulative Ivory Coast port shipments reached 2.11 million metric tons in the current marketing year through August 2, up 20 percent from a year earlier, while ICE cocoa inventories remain near a two-year high of 3,335,656 bags as of Thursday. Ghana's cocoa regulator COCOBOD projected 2026/27 production could fall to 450,000 to 550,000 metric tons from 750,000 metric tons projected for 2025/26, citing swollen shoot disease, aging farms, and potential El Niño weather, though current-season harvests are up 25.6 percent at 750,000 metric tons. Early surveys of the 2026/27 Ivory Coast crop show below-average cherelle formation and an average estimate of 1.8 million metric tons, down 18 percent from about 2.2 million metric tons in 2025/26, while StoneX cut its 2026/27 global cocoa surplus estimate to 25,000 metric tons from 149,000 metric tons in April and Transgraph Consulting forecast the surplus will shrink to 80,000 metric tons from 415,000 metric tons. Demand was mixed in the second quarter, with European grindings falling 4.6 percent to 316,366 metric tons, North American grindings unexpectedly rising 7.7 percent to 109,659 metric tons, and Asian grindings jumping 25 percent to 224,646 metric tons.
