Abubakar Mohammed TayibuEconomic analysis from Ghana

CocoaExplainer8 min read

From Bean to Bar: Where Cocoa’s Value Is Made

What happens to a tonne of Ghanaian cocoa between the farm and the chocolate bar, what each step yields, and why the pressing step now matters to Ghanaian law.

By Abubakar Mohammed Tayibu · Updated

Figures as at 25 September 2026; cedi conversions at GH¢11.62 to the dollar. Processing yields are industry rules of thumb, not measurements from any one plant.

Ghana grows cocoa; most of the money in chocolate is made somewhere else. Beans account for roughly 5–7% of the retail price of a chocolate bar. The rest is added by the firms that grind, press, mix, brand and sell. The Ghana Cocoa Board Act, 2026 requires that at least half of Ghana’s crop be ground inside the country, so where that value is added, and at what margin, is now a question of law as well as business.

This explainer follows one tonne of beans from the farm to the bar.

From one tonne of cocoa beans to chocolate At origin, beans are harvested, fermented, dried, bagged and graded. At the grinder, 1,000 kg of beans are roasted and winnowed, then ground into about 800 kg of cocoa liquor, which is pressed into about 380 kg of cocoa butter and 420 kg of cocoa cake. The cake is milled to powder. At the chocolate maker, liquor and butter are mixed with sugar and milk, refined and tempered. ORIGIN on the farm Harvest and ferment Pods opened; beans ferment 5–7 days Dry, bag and grade To ~7–8% moisture; 62.5 kg bags in Ghana 1,000 kg of beans Shipped from Tema or Takoradi GRINDER in Ghana or abroad Roast and winnow Shell and germ removed (~10–15% of weight) ~800 kg cocoa liquor Nibs ground to a paste ~380 kg butter Priced as a ratio to the bean price ~420 kg cake Milled to powder for drinks, baking MAKER Chocolate Liquor + butter + sugar; refined, tempered
Illustrative yields per tonne of beans reaching the grinder. Real plants vary with bean origin, moisture and press settings.

On the farm

Harvest. Pods are cut from the tree by hand, never pulled, to protect the cushion that flowers for the next crop. There are two harvests a year: a main crop and a smaller light (or mid) crop. In Ghana the main crop comes in roughly from October to March and the light crop roughly from April to September. From the 2026/27 season Ghana’s marketing year runs from 1 September to 31 August.

Fermentation. The pods are split and the wet beans, still coated in white pulp, are heaped or boxed under banana leaves for roughly five to seven days. This step is not optional. Yeasts turn the pulp’s sugars into alcohol, bacteria turn the alcohol into acid, and the heap heats to around 45–50°C, which kills the seed and starts the chemistry that becomes chocolate flavour on roasting. Unfermented beans taste flat and bitter, and under-fermentation is one of the defects graders look for.

Drying. Fermented beans are around 55–60% water and must come down to about 7–8% before they can be stored and shipped without going mouldy. Smallholders dry them in the sun on mats or raised tables, usually for one to two weeks. Beans dried too close to cooking fires pick up a smoky taint, another grading defect.

Bagging and grading. Dried beans go into jute sacks. A Ghanaian bag holds 62.5 kg net, so 16 bags make a tonne; that is why Ghana’s per-bag price has to be multiplied by 16 before it can be compared with Côte d’Ivoire’s per-kilogramme price. Before any bag can be sealed for export, COCOBOD’s quality control inspectors grade it: they cut beans open and count mouldy, slaty (unfermented), insect-damaged and germinated beans, and count how many beans make up 100 grams. The grade sets the price the shipment earns. The beans leave through Tema or Takoradi.

At the grinder

Cleaning and roasting. Beans are cleaned of stones, fibre and metal, then roasted, typically at around 120–140°C. Roasting develops the flavour compounds that make chocolate taste like chocolate and loosens the shell.

Winnowing. Roasted beans are cracked and blown with air, which separates the light shell and germ from the heavy nib. Shell and germ are about 10–15% of the bean’s weight and leave the chocolate stream here.

Grinding: cocoa liquor. The nibs, about half fat by weight, are ground until the friction melts the fat and the nibs become a thick brown paste called cocoa liquor or cocoa mass. From 1,000 kg of beans, expect roughly 800 kg of liquor.

Pressing: butter and cake. Hydraulic presses squeeze the liquor into two products. This is the most important split in the chain.

  • Cocoa butter, roughly 380 kg, is the pale fat that gives chocolate its snap and gloss, and is also sold to cosmetics and pharmaceutical makers.
  • Cocoa cake, roughly 420 kg, is the pressed solid, which is milled into cocoa powder. Presses can leave different amounts of fat in the cake. The trade’s “10–12” powders are the low-fat grades, with 10–12% fat left in; “20–22” and “22–24” are the high-fat grades used for richer drinking chocolate. The numbers describe the fat left in the powder, not the butter taken out. Much powder is alkalised (“Dutch-processed”) to darken it and soften its acidity.

At the chocolate maker

Liquor and butter are mixed with sugar, and milk solids for milk chocolate. The mix is refined until its particles are too small for the tongue to detect (under roughly 30 microns), conched (worked mechanically, sometimes for many hours, to develop flavour and smooth the texture) and tempered (cooled and reheated through a precise cycle so that the butter sets in the stable crystal form that gives a glossy finish and a clean snap).

The ratios in one table

Step Output per 1,000 kg of beans at the grinder Why
Roast and winnow ~850–900 kg of nib Shell and germ (~10–15%) removed
Grind ~800 kg of liquor Further moisture and processing loss
Press: butter ~380 kg (about 45–50% of the liquor) Depends on press setting
Press: cake ~420 kg (about 50–55% of the liquor) The remainder; milled to powder

Treat these as orientation, not conversion factors. Yields differ by bean origin, moisture on arrival and how a plant sets its presses.

Why the pressing step matters to Ghana

A grinder buys beans and sells butter and powder. Cocoa butter is usually priced as a multiple of the bean price on the futures market, a ratio that has ranged from roughly 1.5 to 2.9 times and moves with the cycle. Powder is priced outright. The combined value of butter and powder, set against the cost of beans, is the trade’s best single guide to a grinder’s margin.

That is why the local-processing mandate stands or falls on butter ratios and powder prices, not on the bean price alone. When bean prices surge and product prices don’t keep pace, grinding stops paying. In the first half of 2026 European grindings were 7.8% lower than a year earlier, and Cargill stopped grinding in Ghana in September 2025. Both are consistent with a margin squeeze; these figures alone don’t prove that was the cause.

Ghana has about 505,000 tonnes a year of installed grinding capacity. It grinds roughly 210,000 tonnes, on the US Department of Agriculture’s estimate; the International Cocoa Organization put 2023/24 at 194,000. Half of the Cocoa Marketing Company’s forecast 2026/27 crop of 470,000 to 620,000 tonnes would be 235,000 to 310,000 tonnes. The Arithmetic Doesn’t Close sets out why meeting that mandate collides with how the season is being financed.

Where the value sits

The largest chocolate companies are bigger than the countries that grow the crop. Mondelez alone reported $36.4 billion of revenue in 2024, roughly eight times Ghana’s annual cocoa export earnings. With beans at 5–7% of a bar’s retail price, a policy that captures the grinding margin moves Ghana up the chain by one step. The branding and retail margin stays where it is.

Certification and traceability

Premiums. Certified cocoa earns a premium per tonne, but only on the volume actually sold as certified. Rainforest Alliance requires a minimum “sustainability differential” of $70 a tonne, paid to farmers. The Fairtrade Premium, paid to the farmer organisation, which decides how to spend it, rises to $275 a tonne in Ghana from 1 October 2026, alongside a Fairtrade minimum price of $3,500 a tonne. For scale: Fairtrade’s living-income reference price for Ghana is GH¢45,400 a tonne, and the 2026/27 producer price, announced on 25 September, is GH¢42,400, a gap of GH¢3,000, or about $258 a tonne at GH¢11.62 to the dollar.

The EU deforestation rules. Under the EU Deforestation Regulation, large and medium companies placing cocoa on the EU market must show that it was not grown on land deforested after 2020, down to the location of the plot. After two postponements, the rules are due to apply to them from 30 December 2026, and to micro and small companies from 30 June 2027. The regulation has been under review again in 2026, so check the current dates before relying on them.

Ghana’s response. The Ghana Cocoa Traceability System is designed to track beans from mapped farms to the port. It was piloted in the 2023/24 light-crop season, when about 1,230 bags (77.3 tonnes) were bought, graded and exported through it. It was then tested with eight licensed buyers handling about 60% of purchases, ahead of a planned national start in August 2025. COCOBOD says it has mapped farms and registered farmers to meet the December 2026 deadline.

By-products

Shell and germ removed at winnowing are sold as mulch, fuel, animal feed and for small extract markets. The pod husk, left on the farm, is being tested as a source of potash fertiliser and animal feed in several producing countries. It is a small and still-emerging market, not yet an established source of income.

Sources

Corrections and updates

  • Updated the living-income comparison under 'Certification and traceability' for the 2026/27 producer price announced by COCOBOD on 25 September: GH¢42,400 a tonne, replacing February's GH¢41,392. The gap to the living-income reference price is now GH¢3,000, about $258 a tonne.
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