What is the ICCO Quarterly Bulletin—and how can it affect cocoa prices?
4 min read · Public
A practical guide to ICCO production, grindings, surplus and stocks data: what the figures mean, how revisions can influence expectations and why a surplus is not an automatic sell signal.
What is the ICCO quarterly bulletin?
The International Cocoa Organization’s Quarterly Bulletin of Cocoa Statistics brings together production, grindings, stocks, prices and trade data. ICCO publishes it in February, May, August and November. The full publication is sold by ICCO; public release summaries provide selected figures.
For a cocoa researcher, its value is the connected balance sheet. A production headline becomes more useful when read alongside processing demand and the stock cushion. The bulletin is separate from ICCO’s monthly market review.
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Remaining stocks and their scale relative to processing
Is the buffer rebuilding or shrinking?
ICCO’s balance uses net crop, adjusted for loss in weight, rather than simply subtracting grindings from gross production. Its May 2026 public table explicitly explains this convention. Small discrepancies can also reflect rounding.
Grindings are a processing measure, not a direct count of chocolate purchases. Likewise, a global ending-stock estimate is not the same dataset as beans in exchange warehouses. Keep those labels intact.
How can the bulletin affect price?
Our interpretation is that the price-sensitive element is the change in expectations. A smaller-than-expected surplus may lead traders to reassess supply comfort. A larger-than-expected surplus may encourage the opposite reassessment. Neither outcome guarantees a direction: positioning, inventories, currency moves and other news can dominate a session.
Consider two hypothetical revisions. If production falls by 50,000 tonnes while grindings remain unchanged, the balance tightens. If production is unchanged but grindings fall by 50,000 tonnes, the balance loosens. The same headline balance could also hide simultaneous changes on both sides.
Stocks matter because a single surplus season does not describe the entire supply buffer. Read the opening-stock revisions and ending-stock estimate alongside the annual balance before concluding that scarcity has disappeared.
Why season labels matter
A bulletin issued in the 2025/26 cocoa year may revise estimates for 2024/25. The issue date and the season being estimated are separate pieces of information. Do not relabel an old-season revision as a fresh forecast for 2026/27.
Estimates can change as evidence improves. Retain the original publication date when comparing releases, so readers can see what was known at the time.
A practical release-day checklist
Read the season first. Compare the same season with the previous bulletin. Separate production revisions from grinding revisions. Check whether stocks and the ratio tell a consistent story. Then compare the result with your documented expectations.
For prices, record the instrument, contract and timestamp. A move on the same date is not enough to prove that ICCO caused it.
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Educational interpretation checked on 12 November 2026; not a prediction of the next price move.
Additional reading context
Educational explanation added to help interpret this article. It is not a new market update or a revision to the original dated figures.
Putting the guide into practice
Choose one dated observation relevant to this guide and trace it back to the original source. Record the benchmark, unit and reporting period before comparing it with another figure. This turns the explanation into a repeatable research process: establish what is measured, check what changed and identify what the observation cannot tell you.
Use the database to check the neighbouring evidence. A price observation can be compared with physical availability and positioning; an inventory or arrivals observation can be checked against compatible history and demand reporting. Agreement between several observations can strengthen a hypothesis, while disagreement highlights the next question to investigate. Neither outcome removes the need to check timing and definitions.
Applying this topic
For price research, establish the exchange, contract month and currency before comparing quotes. Check whether a value is live, delayed or a completed-session observation. When investigating a move, arrange the evidence in time order and distinguish news available before the move from reporting published afterwards. A forecast is conditional on its horizon and assumptions; use those assumptions to assess it rather than treating an annual average or a scenario as an exact target.
Published research and personal commentary, not personalised investment advice. Trade ideas can fail; evaluate the assumptions and dated follow-ups. The original published post is preserved.