West African Cocoa Beans

Côte d'Ivoire & Ghana — Good Fermented, main crop

Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana between them grow roughly 60% of the world's cocoa, and their bulk Forastero beans are the physical the ICE London and New York contracts are written against. Quality is judged by the cut test: 300 beans sliced lengthwise and counted for mould, slaty (unfermented), insect-damaged and germinated beans, with Good Fermented the premium standard and Fair Fermented the workaday one. Alongside that sit bean count — 100 beans per 100 g or fewer for main crop, since larger beans yield better — moisture at 7.5% maximum because anything above 8% invites mould in transit, free fatty acids at 1.75% or below where the beans go to pressing, and fat content of 50 to 57%. Ghanaian beans have historically carried a premium for consistent fermentation and drying under COCOBOD's centralised marketing; Ivorian volume is larger and marketed through the Conseil du Café-Cacao. Both carry the Living Income Differential, a fixed premium per tonne intended to lift farmer income.

Buy West African beans for volume chocolate and confectionery manufacture, grinding into liquor, butter and powder, and any programme where a dependable, well-understood bulk flavour base matters more than distinctive character. That is the great majority of the chocolate industry. What these beans will not give you is the fruit, floral and nut complexity of the fine-flavour origins — Forastero is chosen for reliability and yield, not for nuance, and a single-origin bar sold on tasting notes needs Ecuador, Peru or the Caribbean instead. The dominant commercial issue in this origin right now is EUDR: European-bound cocoa needs plot-level geolocation and a due-diligence statement, and for smallholder-sourced West African beans that traceability is genuinely hard to assemble. Treat it as a gating requirement and confirm it before contracting, not after. CBIL brokers Ivorian and Ghanaian beans against cut test, bean count, moisture, FFA and EUDR documentation, on FOB Abidjan, San Pedro and Tema, CFR and CIF terms.