Arrivals of cocoa from Bahia, Brazil's top producing state, slumped last week as a surprisingly large main crop starts to peter out, data from the Bahia Commercial Association showed on Wednesday. Arrivals from Bahia in the week to January 9 fell to 28,414 60-kg bags from 45,951 bags in the previous week, but they were still ahead of the 24,482 bags delivered in the same week last year.
Output from other states, which grow far less than Bahia, rose to 15,278 bags from 11,586 bags in the previous week and were triple the 4,795 bags delivered in the same week last year. "Arrivals from Bahia continued their seasonal decline, but the accumulated total to this date already is the largest of the last 15 years," cocoa analyst Thomas Hartmann said in a weekly crop bulletin of the 2010/11 (May/April) season.