Featured Member Sucden

A WORLDWIDE PERSPECTIVE

Sucden is an independent leader in soft commodities trading. We combine global know-how with local expertise to connect supply and demand in a sustainable way. While doing so, we serve our clients and partners with quality and integrity.

We trade on the world’s major exchanges in a wide range of products and services including sugar, coffee, cocoa, ethanol, ocean freight and futures/options brokerage. In support, we are active in agriculture and sourcing, processing, logistics, distribution, merchandising, financing, research and risk management.

GLOBAL REACH

Our entrepreneurial and professional team of 5,400 employees in over 25 locations worldwide originates and ships more than 10 million tonnes of soft commodities every year. We do this globally through our agricultural, processing and logistical activities encompassing operations in places as far afield as Russia, Brazil, Mexico, India, Europe, China, the USA and several other locations across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

SOLID FOUNDATIONS

Since our formation in 1952, Sucden has built a reliable and trustworthy reputation through its business activities. Today the company is still privately owned. We are led by Serge Varsano, the son of our founding partner, from our corporate headquarters in Paris, France.

Cocoa

“Sucden Cocoa aims to be a leading supplier of cocoa to the chocolate and cocoa processing industries.”

GLOBAL REACH

Sucden Cocoa’s head office in Paris serves as a hub for Sucden’s sourcing, logistics, marketing, and trading operations. General Cocoa, which is based in New York and which was acquired in 2014, has provided the company with a strong marketing arm in North America as well as global sourcing and product trading capabilities.

We are committed to building sustainable supply chains and work closely with our clients and suppliers to implement certified, traceable, or customized programs on behalf of these clients.

MARKET EXPERTISE

We source cocoa beans and products from all major producing origins. In Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, we source on the ground and operate warehouses and export facilities. We actively originate cocoa beans from Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ecuador, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Papua New Guinea. Our vast network and capabilities, however, provide us with a platform to source beans from other origins. We also source cocoa products from the United States and Europe as well as from producing countries.

We have a global sales footprint, supplying cocoa beans and products to the world’s leading chocolate manufacturers and processors. Sucden originates approximately 580,000 tons of beans equivalent annually.

Sucden is one of the last existing cocoa trading houses. Since we do not have holdings in processing or chocolate manufacturing, we are uniquely positioned in the industry. We focus solely on sourcing to ensure we can provide our processing and chocolate manufacturing customers with competitively priced raw materials.

Thanks to Sucden Group’ strong financial basis with close to $1 billion in equity and a solid risk profile, we can trade large volumes and invest for the long term.

The global supply and demand of cocoa beans is generally in equilibrium, making access to information essential to mitigating market volatility and maximizing financial performance. Obtaining information from many producing countries can prove to be challenging. As such, Sucden Cocoa has developed its own fundamentals research capability in order to closely monitor and analyse crop developments across the principal producing origins.

Cocoa is a fragile cash crop, often grown by small-holder farmers in remote areas: two factors which contribute to the difficulty of sourcing cocoa. In order to originate cocoa successfully, Sucden therefore builds long term partnerships with farmers and suppliers, thereby helping to secure the supply of cocoa. When appropriate, Sucden also provides pre-financing in an effort to help improve the liquidity within the supply chain.

SUSTAINABLY SOURCED COCOA

In May 2019 Sucden announced a Forests Protection Policy applicable to its cocoa sourcing. The priority is to accelerate our farm mapping program and to trace farmer deliveries to the first point of purchase, which to date has focused on farmers involved in our sustainable programs, in Ivory Coast and Ghana. Learn more: Sucden establishes Forests Protection Policy for the cocoa supply chain.

Our long term priority is to support our partners at origin whilst continuing to build our ability to deliver sustainably sourced cocoa in which our clients can have the upmost confidence.

WHO WE ARE

Sucden creates opportunities – Specializing in soft commodities, our advantage is that we trade worldwide on all the major markets and act in every capacity from production to processing and distribution. Our approach is to identify and capture distinctive value for our clients whenever and wherever the supply and demand balance changes and the markets move.