Cocoa prices continued their ascent this week, breaking record after record, still boosted by supply shortages from producing countries and expectations of a disappointing harvest. Copper, for its part, is under pressure, due to a rare unanimous decision by 18 Chinese smelters.

Les prix n’en finissent plus de s’enflammer, reconnaît Carsten Fritsch, analyste chez Commerzbank. Ils profitent à plein du défaut d’offre au niveau mondial en raison de récoltes pénalisées par des conditions météorologiques défavorables et le manque d’engrais, qui ont réduit les rendements, signifie l’expert.

In New York, the futures contract exceeded $8,000 per tonne on March 15. The most active London contract broke the £6,500 barrier for the first time on the same day.

At around 4.30 pm GMT (5.30 pm in Paris) in London, a tonne of cocoa for May delivery was worth £6,538, compared with £5,231 at the end of the session a week earlier.

In New York, a tonne for delivery in the same month was worth $8,022, compared with $6,396 on March 15.

According to analysts, the end of the upward spiral is still not in sight, as the harvest, due to start in April in Côte d'Ivoire, by far the largest producing country, looks set to be disappointing.

Copper under tension

Cocoa is not the only commodity to be gripped by fever. Copper prices soared last week on the London Metal Exchange (LME), the benchmark exchange for metals. On March 15, the metal hit an 11-month high of $9,098 per tonne.

The rise was fueled by reports that "Chinese smelters have reached a rare agreement to jointly cut metal production to cope with raw material shortages", explained Saxobank analyst Ole Hansen.

According to the Chinese government research institute Antaike, 19 Chinese foundries took part in a meeting organized by the China Non-Ferrous Metals Industry Association in Beijing.

The scarcity of supply "has led to a downward trend in treatment and refining charges [the sums paid to smelters and refiners for smelting concentrate and producing refined metal, editor's note] to close to zero", says Ole Hansen. However, if concentrates become scarce, smelters will reduce their margins and lower these costs.

On the LME, a tonne of copper for delivery in three months was trading at $9,090 at the end of the week, compared with $8,579.50 at the close seven days earlier.

La rédaction (avec APF)