The cocoa market - France

Cocoa is one of the star products in many French shopping baskets. Over 3,000 years ago, the pre-Olemic peoples discovered the cocoa treea fruit tree native to the tropical forests of America. Cocoa pods are the fruit of the cacao tree: they grow on the tree's branches or directly on the trunk. The Mayas and Aztecs are considered the first chocolate consumers. in pre-Columbian times, they perfected the first process for transforming cocoa beans into a chocolate drink. After harvesting, the cocoa beans were fermented in leaves, roasted and then hot-ground to a cocoa paste shaped into a cylinder. Today, cocoa is a key product in the French diet. In fact, the French are among the top ten consumers of cocoa, with nearly 4.5 kg of chocolate per person per year. Cocoa is the powder obtained by grinding cocoa beans, the fruit of the cacao tree. The cocoa industry is clearly divided into :

The upstream part, which consists of cultivating cocoa plantations, recovering the cocoa beans and drying them. This primary upstream industry is the virtual monopoly of developing countries; The primary downstream part, which consists in transforming the raw beans into "cocoa mass", a semi-finished product used by the entire chocolate industry (cleaning, drying, roasting, etc.).this is a semi-finished product used by the entire chocolate industry (cleaning, drying, roasting, hulling and grinding), which sometimes takes place directly on the production site, but is more often the preserve of Western multinationals; The secondary downstream part, which consists in the production of chocolate and other by-products that are ultimately distributed to end consumers. These secondary and tertiary activities are largely concentrated in developed countries;