Guan Chong Bhd
., one of the world’s biggest cocoa processors, is scouting for beans worldwide as bad weather and disease pummeling crops in top West African growers send prices to a record.
The Kuala Lumpur-listed company is looking to procure cocoa from countries such as Ecuador, Peru and Indonesia - all minor growers - and paying premiums to book their beans. That’s due to worries that some sellers in heavyweights like Ivory Coast and Ghana may default on supply contracts.
"Everybody is panicking,” Brandon Tay Hoe Lian, chief executive officer of the firm, said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur. Prices are going higher every day, but the beans are not coming, he said. "We not only have to fight for beans, we’re also paying premiums.”
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