The supply chain of Cocoa goes through a complex production process that includes farmers, buyers, transportation and trading, collection, certification, storage processors and chocolatiers and distributors. The cocoa industry supply chain structure is broken into activities within Ghana and outside Ghana as depicted in the flow chart below. It identifies and profiles the key actors and describes their specific roles within the supply chain. It explores the interrelationships between actors and the principal factors that influence behaviour and drive decision-making. Overall, the cocoa supply chain can be subdivided along four major product categories, based on the stage of processing.
The categories are the following:
• Cocoa beans (raw, or minimally processed
• Semi-finished cocoa products (cocoa paste/liquor, cocoa butter, cocoa powder);
• Couverture, or industrial chocolate;
• Finished chocolate confectionary products.
The structure below focuses on Ghana’s domestic supply chain, which encompasses the production and marketing of cocoa beans and semi-finished cocoa products from their origin up to the point of export. The supply chain is comprised of a wide range of actors, from input suppliers to farmers, to traders, to transport and other service providers, to processors. Each has a fundamental role to play in the supply chain that brings cocoa and cocoa products to the market.
