Malaysia cocoa grinding seen around 300,000 tonnes

Cocoa grindings in Malaysia, currently Asia's largest grinder, are expected to be unchanged at around 300,000 tonnes in 2011, the director-general of the Malaysian Cocoa Board, Azhar Ismail, said on Thursday. "It will be unchanged because our capacity remains the same," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a cocoa conference on the island of Bali.
He declined to give other details. Malaysia's cocoa grindings for the first quarter of 2011 increased to 81,419 tonnes from 73,498 tonnes in the same period of 2010. Total cocoa grinding for 2010 rose by 8.3 percent to 302,366 tonnes from 279,228 tonnes in 2009, the MCB said in January. When processing beans, grinders get butter and cake, which is later pressed into powder.