Cocoa & cotton
Two softs that share a warehouse and nothing else.
Cocoa graded by cutting a hundred beans in half and counting what is wrong with them. Cotton graded by a machine that measures fibre properties to two decimal places. One of the oldest manual tests in commodity trade, and one of the most instrumented — on the same page because they move together and are judged nothing alike.
Cocoa
The cut test — a hundred beans, halved, and counted.
Cocoa grading has resisted instrumentation because the defects that matter are inside the bean. So the trade cuts a defined sample lengthwise and counts what it finds, and that count is the grade.
| What is counted | What it means |
|---|---|
| Mouldy beans | Internal mould. The most serious defect — it carries directly into flavour, and mould in the bean is where ochratoxin and off-flavours originate. Grade standards limit it tightly. |
| Slaty beans | Unfermented or badly fermented, showing a slate-grey compact interior instead of a brown ridged one. Slaty cocoa has no chocolate flavour to develop, and no roasting profile recovers it. |
| Insect-damaged, germinated and flat beans | Counted separately and limited. Flat beans carry almost no nib, so they are yield loss as well as a defect. |
| Bean count per 100 g | Bean size, expressed inversely — a lower count means larger beans. It governs nib yield and roasting uniformity, and it is a price term in its own right. |
| Moisture | Contracted at a maximum in the region of 7.5 %. Above it the beans mould in storage; well below it they become brittle and shatter in handling. A range, not just a ceiling. |
| Fat content | Cocoa butter is a large part of the value, and a processor pressing for butter is buying fat as much as flavour. |
| Foreign matter and broken beans | Stones, sticks, string and shell. Ordinary in origin, limited by contract, and cheap to check. |
Cadmium
An origin constraint that behaves exactly like the phosphate one.
Cocoa takes up cadmium from soil, and some cocoa-growing regions — parts of Latin America in particular, where volcanic and alluvial soils are naturally higher in it — produce beans well above what the EU permits in finished products.
- The regulated point
- Maximum levels under Regulation (EU) 2023/915 apply to the finished cocoa and chocolate products rather than to the bean. Cocoa powder sold to the final consumer is limited to 0.60 mg/kg, and chocolate is limited on a tiered basis that rises with cocoa solids content. The current full table is released through the Technical Library rather than published here, because these limits are amended and a stale table is worse than none.
- Why that matters to a bean contract
- Because the buyer has to work backwards. A chocolate manufacturer knows what its recipe can carry and therefore what the bean must be below. Contracting a bean cadmium ceiling is the only way that calculation survives into the supply chain.
- Blending helps here, and it is not free
- Unlike phosphate, where the limit is per unit of nutrient and blending is arithmetically useless, cocoa cadmium limits are per kilogram of product — so blending a high-cadmium origin with a low one genuinely reduces the finished figure. But it also blends the flavour, and origin character is what a fine-flavour buyer is paying for. The trade-off is real and belongs in the conversation.
- It is soil, not process
- No fermentation, drying or roasting step removes cadmium. Like apatite, the number was decided by geology before anyone offered the cargo.
- What we do
- Report cadmium per lot from an independent laboratory with the detection limit stated, and establish the buyer's finished-product ceiling before offering an origin rather than after.
Deforestation
Cocoa is in scope, and the smallholder problem is the same as coffee's.
Cocoa is one of the seven commodities covered by the EU Deforestation Regulation. Following the revision agreed at the end of 2025 it applies to all operators from 30 December 2026, with micro and small enterprises given until 30 June 2027.
What has to exist is evidence that the cocoa is deforestation-free against a 31 December 2020 cut-off, that it was produced lawfully in the country of production, and a due diligence statement covering it — underpinned by geolocation of the plots where it was grown.
West African cocoa in particular comes overwhelmingly from smallholdings, aggregated through cooperatives and buying stations before it ever reaches a port. Plot coordinates have to be captured at farm level and survive every bulking step, which is a data problem rather than a certification one. As with coffee, a sustainability certification does not deliver it and does not satisfy the regulation.
We build the geolocation and legality file with the origin ahead of the date and say plainly where an origin cannot supply it. The due diligence statement remains the obligation of the EU operator placing the goods on the market.
Cotton
HVI classing — five numbers that decide what can be spun.
Cotton is the opposite of cocoa: instrumented, standardised and reported bale by bale. High Volume Instrument classing measures fibre properties directly, and a spinner buys against those numbers because they predict what will happen on the machine.
| Property | What it governs |
|---|---|
| Staple length | Fibre length, in 32nds of an inch or in millimetres. It sets the finest yarn count that can be spun — short staple cannot make fine yarn at any price, so this is the first filter on whether a cotton suits a mill at all. |
| Micronaire | A combined measure of fineness and maturity, obtained by airflow through a plug of fibre. Both low and high readings are penalised: low usually means immature fibre that will not take dye evenly, high means coarse fibre that spins poorly into fine counts. The premium range is a band, not a maximum. |
| Strength | In grams per tex. It sets yarn strength and end-breakage rates on the spinning frame, which is a productivity number for the mill rather than a quality preference. |
| Uniformity index | The ratio of mean length to upper-half mean length. Low uniformity means a lot of short fibre, more waste in combing and more unevenness in the yarn. |
| Colour grade | Reflectance and yellowness, reported as a grade code. It governs how the cotton takes dye and whether it can be used for whites at all. |
| Leaf grade and trash | Plant matter left after ginning. It is cleaning cost and waste percentage, and it is where a cheap-looking cotton stops being cheap. |
| Short fibre index and nep count | Increasingly specified by fine-count spinners. They predict yarn imperfections better than the headline properties alone. |
Cotton
The defect that no instrument measures.
HVI classes fibre. It does not detect the single most damaging problem in the cotton trade, which is foreign matter — polypropylene from bale wrapping and harvest sacking, hair, jute string, plastic film, and fragments of the packaging the cotton itself travelled in.
- Why it is so costly
- A fragment of polypropylene passes through spinning invisibly and then refuses to take dye, so it appears as a white streak in a finished dyed fabric — after all the value has been added. A few grammes of contamination in a bale can condemn a production run.
- Where it comes from
- Almost entirely from handling: the wrong wrapping material, sacking used in harvest, string, and contaminated storage. It is an origin-practice question and a well-known one, which is why some origins carry a persistent discount that has nothing to do with their fibre.
- Stickiness
- Honeydew from whitefly and aphid infestation, which makes fibre adhere to machinery and stops a mill dead. Detected by thermodetection rather than by HVI, and worth specifying where the origin has a history.
- What we do
- Contract for wrapping material explicitly, require contamination inspection at loading with photographs, and treat stickiness testing as a specification line on origins where it belongs rather than as an optional extra.
Pricing
Two markets, two conventions.
- Cocoa
- ICE London cocoa in pounds sterling per tonne and ICE New York cocoa in US dollars per tonne, with physical cargoes trading at a differential for origin and quality. Two currencies as well as two exchanges, so the arbitrage between them carries an FX leg that has to be handled deliberately.
- Cotton
- The ICE No. 2 contract in US cents per pound is the benchmark, with the Cotlook A Index widely used as a world price reference for physical business. Differentials by origin, grade and staple.
- Quality differentials
- On cocoa, bean count and defect count. On cotton, a matrix of staple, micronaire band, strength and colour grade — and it is a matrix, not a ladder, which is why cotton pricing rewards precision in the enquiry.
- Origin premiums
- Fine and flavour cocoa origins, and extra-long staple cottons, price on characteristics the exchange contract does not describe. In both cases you are outside the benchmark and the differential is the whole negotiation.
- What to fix
- The contract, the month, the differential, the grade with its measurement basis, the determination point, and the shipment window.
Scope
Where our obligation ends.
- What we supply
- Cocoa beans by origin and grade in jute, and cotton in wrapped and strapped bales, with independent determination at the contractual point and full classing data.
- What we do not do
- We do not farm, ferment, gin, press or spin, we do not operate warehouses, and we hold no equity in production. We do not offer hedging.
- Cocoa cadmium
- Reported per lot with the detection limit stated, and the buyer's finished-product ceiling established before we offer an origin. We will not offer a high-cadmium origin against an EU finished-product requirement without saying so.
- EUDR on cocoa
- We build the geolocation and legality file. The due diligence statement is the EU operator's obligation, and a sustainability certification does not satisfy it.
- Cotton contamination
- Wrapping material specified in the contract, contamination inspection at loading with photographs. We will not present a classing file as evidence of the absence of foreign matter, because it is not.
How to specify
Six lines each, and they have almost nothing in common.
Which is the argument for reading whichever half applies to you and ignoring the other.
Cocoa — origin and grade
Country and region, grade, and whether you need bulk or fine and flavour character.
Cocoa — the counts
Bean count per 100 g, and your maxima for mouldy, slaty, insect-damaged, germinated and flat beans.
Cocoa — compliance
Moisture range, fat content, cadmium ceiling derived from your finished product, OTA and residue limits, and your EUDR position.
Cotton — the fibre
Staple length, micronaire band, strength in g/tex, uniformity index, colour and leaf grade. Bands, not single figures.
Cotton — the risks
Wrapping material, contamination inspection requirement, and stickiness testing where the origin warrants it.
Both — the commercial frame
Quantity, packing, shipment window, determination point and superintendent, and the futures contract, month and differential.
Inspection
A knife and a hundred beans, or an instrument and every bale.
Independent determination by a superintendent appointed for the cargo — SGS, Bureau Veritas or Intertek — instructed jointly. The two products need genuinely different inspection regimes and it is worth being explicit about both.
- Cocoa — sampling and the cut test
- Bags sampled with a trier across the lot, reduced to the standard sample, and the cut test performed on the defined bean count with each defect category recorded separately rather than as a combined figure. Bean count per 100 g, moisture, fat, foreign matter and broken beans alongside.
- Cocoa — contaminants
- Cadmium with the detection limit stated, ochratoxin A, and pesticide residues to the destination's limits, each with the sampling plan documented.
- Cotton — classing
- HVI classing bale by bale at an accredited laboratory, with the full data file provided rather than a lot average. Where the destination requires it, classing to the standard the mill works to.
- Cotton — contamination and stickiness
- Physical contamination inspection at loading with photographs of the wrapping and the bale faces, and thermodetection for stickiness where the origin has a history. Neither is captured by classing.
- Condition for both
- Containers or holds inspected, cleaned and certified with previous cargo declared; moisture and condition photographed at load and at devanning. Cocoa taints readily and cotton absorbs moisture and odour — both are cargoes that a careless previous stow can ruin without touching a single measured parameter.
- Documentation per lot
- Certificate of quality with the cut test broken out by defect, or the full HVI classing file; cadmium, OTA and residue certificates on cocoa; contamination and stickiness reports on cotton; weight certificate; phytosanitary certificate; certificate of origin; EUDR data pack on cocoa where applicable; bill of lading and the superintendent's report with photographs.
Straight answer
What we will tell you before you ask.
- That the slaty count matters as much as the bean count
- Bean count is quoted in every offer; slaty beans decide whether there is chocolate flavour to develop at all. Fermentation happens at origin and no processor recovers it.
- That cocoa cadmium is decided by the soil
- No process step removes it. Unlike phosphate, blending genuinely works here because the limit is per kilogram of product — but it blends the flavour too, and that trade-off should be explicit.
- That HVI does not detect contamination
- A perfect classing file says nothing about polypropylene in the bale, and polypropylene is what condemns a dyed production run. Specify the wrapping and inspect at loading.
- That micronaire is a band, not a maximum
- Too low is immature fibre that dyes unevenly; too high is coarse fibre that will not spin fine. Both ends are discounted, and an enquiry with a one-sided limit is only half specified.
- That certification is not EUDR compliance on cocoa
- The regulation needs plot geolocation surviving every bulking step from smallholding to port. No sustainability scheme delivers that, and assuming otherwise is the commonest error we see.
Enquiries
Every enquiry is answered by the desk that handles it.
Send the product, quantity, delivery basis, destination and timing. We revert with availability, an indication and the documentation that accompanies it. Specifications are released once we know who we are speaking with.