FMO provides €20 million to expand local cocoa processing in Côte d’Ivoire
Dutch development bank FMO has signed a four-year, €20 million working-capital facility for Ivory Cocoa Products. The financing will help the San Pedro processor secure cocoa beans and increase local grinding as Côte d’Ivoire targets more domestic value addition.
Four-year facility supports bean purchases
Dutch development bank FMO signed a €20 million working-capital facility for Ivory Cocoa Products (ICP) on September 3, 2026, according to Afrimag. The financing, equivalent to about CFA13.1 billion, has a four-year term and consists of a committed €15 million tranche and an additional uncommitted tranche of €5 million.
The facility is intended to help ICP maintain regular purchases of quality cocoa beans for its factory in San Pedro while international cocoa markets remain volatile. Working capital is particularly important for processors because they must pay cooperatives for beans before converting the raw material into semi-finished products and selling those products to customers.
The scale of the industry’s financing requirement extends far beyond this individual transaction. Afrimag cited a study by the Investment Centre of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimating that working-capital needs across Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa sector could reach €4.3 billion in December 2025, compared with €2.8 billion during the 2024/2025 season.
San Pedro plant processes about 90,000 tonnes annually
Founded in 2010 and operational since the 2012/2013 cocoa season, ICP has expanded its annual processing capacity to about 90,000 tonnes of beans. This is FMO’s third investment in the locally owned company since 2019.
ICP converts cocoa beans into butter, liquor and cake for international markets, where the ingredients are used in chocolate and cosmetics manufacturing. Its location in San Pedro, one of the main exit points for Ivorian cocoa, places the plant close to both producing areas and export infrastructure. The company sources most of its beans from Rainforest Alliance-certified agricultural cooperatives and works with Amsterdam-based trader Theobroma BV, the Dutch subsidiary of ECOM Agroindustrial Corp.
Côte d’Ivoire seeks more value before export
The investment supports Côte d’Ivoire’s effort to retain a larger share of cocoa-processing value domestically. FMO said the country supplies about 40% of the world’s cocoa, although a substantial volume of its crop continues to leave the country as raw beans. More remunerative manufacturing stages are still concentrated in Europe, North America and Asia.
Ivorian authorities aim to process at least half of the national harvest by 2030, while some official documents cite a target of 80%. During the 2025/2026 season, processors ground about 650,000 tonnes, equal to 30% of the crop, according to data from the Coffee and Cocoa Council, the industry regulator.
Installed capacity is rising faster than utilization
Yves Brahima Koné, director-general of the Coffee and Cocoa Council, said installed processing capacity is expected to increase from the current 1.155 million tonnes to 1.34 million tonnes in the 2026/2027 season. The figures show that Côte d’Ivoire already has substantially more industrial capacity than the volume currently processed, making reliable bean procurement and working-capital access critical to raising plant utilization.
Financing processors alone will not resolve the industry’s production constraints. Ageing plantations and farmers, falling yields and climate pressure continue to affect the supply base. For processors, traders and investors, the effectiveness of new capacity will therefore depend on parallel investment in farm productivity and plantation renewal. The FMO facility addresses one immediate bottleneck by giving ICP more liquidity to purchase sustainable beans, but the wider local-processing strategy also requires enough cocoa production to keep expanding factories supplied.
