Jakarta, July 2: The poor quality of cocoa beans in Indonesia's key growing areas will slow exports out of the world's third-largest cocoa producer in coming months, traders said on Wednesday. Traders said that although daily arrivals of cocoa beans have stabilised at around 300 to 500 tonnes for the past week, only a small amount of them are of good quality due to extremely wet conditions."A lot of the cocoa beans have been bought by speculators rather than exporters. It is quite hard to find good quality cocoa beans for exports," said one trader in the South Sulawesi, capital of Makassar.
But another trader said shipments are still on the move for buyers in the US, Hamburg and Brazil. Makassar is the main gateway for Indonesia's cocoa exports from Sulawesi island, which accounts for 75 per cent of total cocoa output.
"For next month we have a shipment of 8,000 tonnes of cocoa beans to Philadephia and another 2,000 to Hamburg," said one trader.
Traders said cocoa exports from Sulawesi were seen falling to around 15,000 tonnes in July from 18,000 tonnes in June.
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