Brazil's cocoa arrivals tumble

Trees in Brazil's main cocoa state Bahia appear to be running out of puff after churning out beans for weeks at a pace unseen for more than a decade. Last week's arrivals from Bahia totalled 66,084 bags, a big drop after sustaining a level between 90,000 and 116,000 bags for the last month, a level not seen since the mid-1990s when fungal witch's broom disease began ravaging plantations.
It was still well-above the 35,454 bags delivered in the same week last year however. Main crop cocoa production in Brazil tends to be concentrated in the November-December period and tails off sharply after then. So far in the 2010/11 (May/April) season, cocoa arrivals are nearly 15 percent ahead of the quantity delivered by this stage of last year's harvest. The cumulative total from May. 1 stands at 3.26 million 60-kg bags versus last year's 2.84 million, data from the Bahia Commercial Association showed.