Those traders then sell beans or cocoa products - butter, powder and cocoa liquor - to global chocolate giants such as Nestle (NESN.S), Hershey (HSY.N) and Mondelez (MDLZ.O).

A delay of 350,000 tons means cocoa traders and processors could face losses of about $4,000 per ton on cocoa futures they had bought to hedge their physical bean purchases, or around $1.4 billion ...

Major African cocoa plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana have stopped or cut processing because they cannot afford to buy beans, four trading sources said, meaning chocolate prices around the world are ...

A shortage of cocoa beans has led to a near shutdown of processing plants in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, the two countries responsible for 60% of global production.

Bonbons and truffles are even more of a luxury this Valentine's Day. For the third year, cocoa harvests are coming up short due to abnormal weather, which has led to cocoa beans being so expensive ...

There’s only so much cocoa to go around: Last year’s U.S. cocoa bean imports were at their lowest level in decades, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.