Ivory Coast's upcoming October-March main cocoa crop could produce an exceptional harvest of as much as 1.2 million tonnes thanks to excellent rainfall levels and improving husbandry, exporters said on Wednesday.
Four exporters contacted by Reuters in the world's top cocoa producer gave estimates of between 1.185 million to 1.215 million tonnes for the 2007/2008 main crop.
"Unless there's some sort of ecological catastrophe, we should have at least 1.2 million tonnes, unlike the 900,000 tonnes we got (in the last main crop) which was more difficult," said the director of one international exporter in Abidjan.
Cocoa trees on farms in the West African country are laden with large numbers of pods, some of which will be ready to gather in the next fortnight - weeks ahead of the official start to the 2007-08 main crop in early October.