Ivory Coast cocoa exporters said on Monday they were struggling to purchase enough beans to satisfy export contracts due to a sharp and unexpected drop in deliveries to the top grower's ports.
Weekly port arrivals fell to 22,000 tonnes last week, down from 67,000 tonnes during the last week of January, according to exporters estimates.
"We've received 140,000 tonnes in February compared to 175,000 last year and, given the current situation, our predictions for March are at 70,000 tonnes compared to 124,000 last year," said the director of a European export company.
A Reuters poll last week predicted output of 1.320 million tonnes of cocoa during the October-to-March main crop, down from 1.5 million tonnes last season and short of the 1.450 million forecast at the start of the season.
Exporters and pod counters responding to the poll blamed disease outbreaks and poor weather conditions since December for the drop in production.
"It is difficult for companies that have export contracts to buy physical cocoa," exporter group GNI, which includes most domestic export firms, said a statement last week. "The question the whole sector is asking is: where did the cocoa go?"
Members of GEPEX, another exporters' association, which includes grinders and multinational companies, also worried about the sudden decline in production levels.
"We had all bet on the same production levels as last season but it doesn't seem to be going this way," the director of an international export company told Reuters.
(Reporting by Ange Aboa; Editing by Sofia Christensen and Edmund Blair)