Cemoi Plans to Boost Ivory Coast Cocoa Bean Purchases by 50%

Cemoi, a French chocolate maker, plans to boost purchases of Ivory Coast cocoa beans to 150,000 metric tons a season, chief executive officer Patrick Poirrier said.

The Perpignan-based company currently buys 100,000 tons of beans during the harvest, Poirrier told reporters today in Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, Abidjan. About 70,000 tons are ground into cocoa butter and other products in its processing plant in the city, he said.

Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa grower, produced 1.5 million tons of the crop in the 2010-2011 harvesting season, according to the London-based International Cocoa Organization.

To contact the reporter on this story: Baudelaire Mieu in Abidjan at bmieu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emily Bowers at ebowers1@bloomberg.net.