Hamburg, March 25 - Stocks of unsold cocoa are piling up in Europe as the economic slowdown hits chocolate sales and consumers turn to cheap brands with low cocoa content, the chairman of Germany's cocoa trade association said.
"Individual producers of chocolate products are seeing massive declines of sales of up to and sometimes above 10 percent in volumes," Andreas Christiansen said on Wednesday.
"Exports from western European countries, the leading area of cocoa consumption, into the rest of the world are suffering even more."
East European and Russian chocolate producers traditionally import semi-finished cocoa products as ingredients from Germany and elsewhere in west Europe.
"Some producers are loosing almost 100 percent of their exports to Central/Eastern Europe and Russia after their currencies devaluated drastically against the euro and dollar," he said.
"We are told some Polish and Hungarian chocolate producers are suffering sales falls of 50 percent."
Unsold European stocks of cocoa products had risen sharply, he said.
"There are large volumes of unsold cocoa products in Europe," he said.
"The warehouses are full, we estimate that we have unsold inventories of cocoa products, that is mainly cocoa butter and cocoa mass, of about 70,000 tonnes in Europe. Unsold inventories held as a buffer are normally around 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes."
This had caused a dramatic drop in prices for physical delivery of cocoa products in Europe at a time when London cocoa futures have soared, he said.
DRAMATIC
In late December butter producers were selling at price ratios 2.66 times London's nearby cocoa contracts. But this had dropped dramatically to around 2.0 times London contracts, he said.
"On the consumption side we are facing the problem that chocolate sales are increasingly being focused on cheap brands in discount supermarkets," he said.
Sales of more expensive chocolate brands were falling because of the economic slowdown, he said. Such supermarket own-brand chocolate had considerably lower cocoa content with more cocoa replacements including vegetable oils.
This was also putting price pressure on the European confectionery industry, which could not hope to sell at higher prices than the giant supermarket chains which dominate retailing in many European countries.
This was another factor contributing to weak physical demand as the uncertain price level meant producers were making even harder efforts to hold costs down by reducing inventories.
The dramatic rise in London cocoa futures since autumn 2008 was increasingly failing to reflect fundamental factors in Europe such as rising inventories, falling production and falling European cocoa product exports, he said.
A closely watched indication of cocoa supply, the arrival figures for cocoa beans in Ivory Coast ports, were no longer reflecting volumes available on international markets, he said.
Although top grower Ivory Coast's bean exports were down on the year, exports of semi-finished cocoa products have risen sharply.
There was frustration that London cocoa prices were increasingly set by financial investment rather than fundamental factors.
"We need more transparency in the London cocoa market to provide us with a proper basis to calculate prices," he said.