Produce Buying Co., Ghana’s biggest purchaser of cocoa from farmers, increased by 13 percent the amount of beans it wants to purchase this season, the second projection boost amid a strong harvest in the world’s second- largest grower.
The Accra-based company wants to buy 300,000 metric tons of beans during the 2010-11 main-crop harvest that began in October and will last until May, Joseph Osei Manu, director of finance and administration, said by phone today.
“The national harvest is really good this year, which I believe we owe to favorable weather for farmers,” he said.
The company earlier said it hoped to purchase 247,000 tons, then increased that projection to 265,000 tons, Manu said Jan. 7. In the 19 weeks of the season to Feb. 10, Produce Buying bought 260,000 tons, compared with 220,000 tons purchased in the entire October-to-June main crop of the 2009-10 season, he said.
The Ghana Cocoa Board, the state-controled industry regulator, increased its own projection for the 2010-11 season by 14 percent to 800,000 tons, citing good rains and the impact of programs to control diseases and increase fertilizer use, Tony Fofie, chief executive officer of the board, said Dec. 22.
Manu said Produce Buying may raise additional capital through “floating bonds or a rights issue” on the Ghana
Stock Exchange this year in order to reduce the company’s reliance on borrowing from banks to have enough capital to buy the beans from farmers. He declined to say when it might happen.
source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-28/produce-buying-of-ghana-boosts-cocoa-purchase-outlook-by-13-for-2010-11.html
