Restructuring of the European chocolate industry and its impact on cocoa production in West Africa

During the 1990s, both the European chocolate industry and the cocoa butter industry have become increasingly centralised. Today only a handful of companies in each segment control the production of intermediate goods and massmarketed brands. The cocoa sectors of the major producing countries in West Africa have at the same time been liberalised and privatised due to the dismantling of state marketing boards. This paper examines the relationship between the new raw material requirements (both in qualitative and quantitative terms) of the processing industry in Europe and restructuring processes in the cocoa sectors of major African producer countries.