(Business in Cameroon) – During the 2024-2025 cocoa season, which officially ended on July 15, 2025, Cameroon’s operating cocoa grinding facilities processed 109,431 tons of beans. This is an increase of 23,759 tons compared with the 89,672 tons processed in the previous season, representing growth of 27.7%.
Commerce Minister Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana announced the figure on August 7, 2025, in Mbankomo, in the Center region, during the launch of the 2025-2026 cocoa season. It is the first time Cameroon has recorded such a volume of domestic cocoa processing.
This rise in local grinding follows the installation of new bean processing units and the expansion of existing plants. In 2015, Société industrielle camerounaise des cacaos (SIC Cacaos), the local subsidiary of Swiss group Barry Callebaut, invested CFA5 billion in its Douala factory, increasing its capacity from 32,000 to 50,000 tons.
That expansion was seen as a response to the arrival of Neo Industry, a 32,000-ton-capacity processor launched in 2015 in Kékem, West region, by Cameroonian businessman Emmanuel Neossi. In 2020, Ivorian billionaire Koné Dossongui opened Atlantic Cocoa in the Kribi port industrial zone in the South, with an annual capacity of 48,000 tons.
On June 27, 2025, Atlantic Cocoa held the kick-off meeting for its expansion project in Kribi. With a planned investment of about CFA10 billion, the company aims to raise its capacity to 64,000 tons, highlighting the upward trend in cocoa processing in Cameroon in recent years.
Entering the market in the 2022-2023 season, local company Africa Processing, based in Mbankomo near Yaoundé, reports annual production of 8,000 tons of cocoa-derived products, generating CFA500 million in revenue.
Despite the strong results of the latest season, Cameroon remains far from its goal of processing 50% of its national cocoa production of 600,000 tons, a target set in the 2019 national cocoa-coffee sector development strategy. In 2024-2025, national cocoa output reached 309,518 tons, meaning processed volumes represented just over 33% of production.
