News

Ivory Coast and Ghana, which supply about 60 % of the world’s cocoa, plan to co-ordinate cocoa sales to try to exert more influence on the market. According to a Bloomberg report, the countries want to harmonise their marketing systems. Officials from each country will visit the other to exchange information.

Joseph Boahen Aidoo, Chief Executive Officer of Ghana’s cocoa regulator, Cocobod, said: “Once we’re able to harmonise, then the two countries can decide when to go to the market. Once that decision is taken and what amount or volumes of cocoa can go to the market, then we can regulate.” The countries will also work on setting a floor price for their farmers and will announce the rate at the same time before each harvest from next season, they said in a statement.

The two nations also agreed to expand and speed up efforts to protect forests. This could have implications for cocoa output as growers in Ivory Coast have significantly expanded illegal plantations in protected forests in recent years.

Italian investor M&C, owner of Treofan Holdings GmbH, has successfully completed the sale of Treofan Group’s Americas business to Canadian label manufacturer CCL Industries. All required regulatory approvals have been granted in the US and in Mexico.

Treofan America Inc., the sales company based in Winston-Salem/NC, as well as the production company in Zacapu/Mexico, which is held via Trespaphan Mexico Holdings GmbH, will transfer into CCL Industries’ ownership on closing date 2 July 2018. Both companies will henceforth trade under the brand name Innovia. A total of approximately 300 people are employed at the two sites.

Comments Treofan Group’s CEO, Dr Walter Bickel: „We are delighted by the successful completion of this transaction. From now on we can fully concentrate on further developing our European production sites, and on continuing to grow our business particularly in the specialty films market.”

Hamburg-based food and feed ingredients supplier, Stern-Wywiol-Gruppe, increased its sales by EUR 56 m to EUR 520 m in 2017. With this figure, the company achieved 12 % growth last year. The development of the group is mainly due to the expansion of its international presence and intensive applications research. This has also led to the group being rated as one of Germany’s Top Twenty most innovative medium-sized enterprises.

Worldwide, the group has over 1,300 employees, 920 of them in Germany. This, too, represents a significant increase. The group is made up of twelve independent specialist firms in Germany that develop, manufacture and distribute functional ingredients for the production of food and animal feed. They include internationally well-known companies such as Hydrosol, Mühlenchemie, SternMaid, SternVitamin, SternChemie, SternEnzym, Herza Schokolade and Berg + Schmidt.

Firmenich from Geneva/Switzerland, the largest privately held flavour and fragrance company in the world, has launched its Natural and Clean Label platform to create “great tasting, natural and traceable food and beverage experiences.” Combining its mastery of taste and naturals, with its high science and consumer understanding, the company is focused on creating the most authentic flavours. Committed to full traceability, it is going far beyond today’s labelling requirements to provide its customers and their consumers with information they can understand and trust.

“With our new Natural and Clean Label platform, we are putting our world-class science to work to create high-intensity taste profiles drawn from nature in a sustainable and traceable way,” says Jerome Barra, VP Innovation & Design. “We use a range of techniques, from soft, solvent-free and CO2 extractions, all the way to ‘kitchen techniques’ leveraging culinary arts, as well as innovative bio-based approaches like fermentation to offer the best of nature sustainably.”

Scientists have discovered what they believe could form an alternative to the use of cocoa butter in the chocolate industry. Cocoa butter is the pure butter extracted from cocoa beans and is a major ingredient in the chocolate industry. A study explored the potential of a wild mango, Mangifera sylvatica, an under-utilised fruit in Southeast Asia, as a new cocoa butter alternative (CBA).

Analyses showed that wild mango butter has a light-coloured fat with a similar fatty acid profile (palmitic, stearic and oleic acid) and triglyceride profile (POP, SOS and POS) to cocoa butter. Its thermal and physical properties are also similar to cocoa butter. Wild mango butter comprises 65 % SOS (1, 3-distearoyl-2-oleoyl-glycerol) which indicates potential to become a cocoa butter improver (an enhancement of CBA). It is concluded that these attractive properties of wild mango could be prompted by a coalition of policy makers, foresters, food industries and horticulturists to promote more widespread cultivation of this wild fruit species to realise the market opportunity.

After rising by more than 50 % in the first four months of 2018, the cocoa price in New York has plunged by 20 % since early May. The price also failed to recover when, at the end of May, the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) abandoned its previous forecast of a 105,000 t surplus in the 2017/18 season and now envisages only an almost balanced market. This was despite optimistic assumptions about production in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two largest producer countries.

Commerzbank Research said it seems that the market had long regarded the ICCO’s predictions as “overly optimistic.” Significantly more pessimistic assessments for Ghana and for the Ivorian mid-crop were often made. However, according to agency reports, farmers in Ivory Coast fear that insufficient rainfall could hamper the remaining mid-crop. If this is reflected in the shipment data, the price could rise quickly again.