Cocoa mass prices: what drives them, and how to compare two quotes

Cocoa mass is the whole roasted cocoa bean, shelled and ground into a smooth paste that sets solid at room temperature. It is sold under three names that all mean exactly the same thing, cocoa mass, cocoa liquor and chocolate liquor, and it is the one ingredient every real dark chocolate bar starts from.

The second question buyers ask, usually in the same email, is what it costs. That answer is less tidy, and this post gives it straight: cocoa mass is quoted rather than listed, because the price is built from a moving bean market, a moving exchange rate, the pack format you want and where the stock is sitting. Below is the whole build-up, so you can read any supplier's quote and know what you are actually looking at.

The one-sentence definition, and the three names

Take a fermented, sun-dried and roasted cocoa bean. Remove the shell. Grind what is left until the cell walls break down and the fat runs. What you get is cocoa mass: a thick, pourable paste above about 35 degrees Celsius, and a firm dark block below it.

Nothing is added and nothing is taken out. Our own mass runs at 50 to 55 percent cocoa butter and 45 to 50 percent cocoa solids, which is simply the ratio the bean arrived with.

The three names are a translation problem, not a product difference.

• Cocoa mass is the term the trade uses in the UK and Europe.
• Cocoa liquor is the same material, and the word survives from the grinding step where it flows.
• Chocolate liquor is the North American term for it, and it is the one that causes the most confusion.

There is no alcohol in any of them. "Liquor" here means liquid, not spirit. If you have found this page searching for where to buy chocolate liquor and you make chocolate, this is the material you were looking for.

Cocoa mass, cocoa powder and cocoa butter are one bean at three stages

This is the part that clears up most of the confusion, and it is worth holding in your head when you compare prices.

Cocoa mass is the bean, whole. Press that mass in a hydraulic press and it splits into two products. The fat that comes out is cocoa butter. The dry cake left behind is milled into natural cocoa powder, which carries only the residual fat the press could not extract, typically 10 to 12 percent.

So the practical difference between mass and powder is fat. Mass is roughly half fat. Powder is roughly a tenth. One maker put it more cleanly than any spec sheet: the liquor still contains the cocoa butter. That single fact is why they do not behave alike in a recipe, and why a powder price and a mass price are not comparable per kilogram in any meaningful way.

If you need the fuller comparison, we have written it up separately in cocoa mass, chocolate liquor and couverture compared.

Cocoa mass versus couverture: what you buy, and what you give up

Every couverture on the market begins as cocoa mass. The manufacturer melts it, adds cocoa butter to hit a fat target, adds sugar, usually adds an emulsifier, then refines and conches it to their own house profile.

Buying mass means buying that starting point before anyone else has made those decisions. You set the fat by how much cocoa butter you add. You set the sweetness. You decide whether lecithin and vanilla go in at all. A common starting formulation is 55 to 65 percent cocoa mass, 10 to 15 percent cocoa butter and 25 to 30 percent sugar, which you then move to suit the bar.

What you give up is convenience. Couverture arrives already refined and conched and ready to temper. Mass needs a melanger or a ball mill to bring particle size down, and it needs you to own the recipe. For makers who want a bar nobody else on the shelf has, that is the point. For a kitchen that needs to melt and mould today, couverture is the honest answer and we will say so.

What actually drives a cocoa mass price

Here is the build-up, in the order it matters.

The bean, priced in dollars

The dominant input is the world cocoa price, traded on the international exchanges and quoted in US dollars per tonne. It moves daily and it can move sharply in a single session. Nobody selling cocoa mass is insulated from it, and any supplier telling you their price is fixed against it is either hedged, holding old stock, or not telling you the whole story.

The exchange rate you actually pay in

This is the input buyers most often miss. The bean is priced in dollars and you pay in sterling, so a move in the exchange rate can cancel out a move in the bean entirely, or double it. There are weeks where the dollar price moves several percent and the sterling cost of the same tonne barely moves at all. If you are watching a cocoa headline and expecting your quote to follow it, the currency is the reason it often does not.

Mass carries the butter, and the butter is the scarce part

Cocoa butter is the fraction of the bean the market competes hardest for, and it is more sought after than it is available. Mass carries that butter inside it rather than having it pressed out. That is why mass pricing tends to track the combined value of the solids and the fat, and why it does not simply sit halfway between a powder price and a butter price.

Format, pack and handling

A 25kg block, a chipped or chunked format and a set of retail packs are the same material with different amounts of labour attached. Breaking and repacking costs money and it is legitimate for that to show in a quote. Ask what format the price refers to before you compare two numbers.

Freight, duty and where the stock is sitting

Cocoa moving from origin by sea takes weeks, and the landed cost carries freight, duty and handling on top of the bean. Stock already sitting in a UK warehouse has all of that baked in and is available now. Stock still afloat is cheaper on paper and later in practice. When you compare quotes, check you are comparing landed UK stock against landed UK stock.

Why we quote rather than publish

Put those together and a published wholesale price would be wrong within a fortnight, which helps nobody. We quote against the volume, the format and the week, and we will tell you what moved if the number changes between one quote and the next. Retail and small trade packs from 100g up to 20kg are listed on the single-origin Ghana cocoa mass page so you can test the material without a conversation. Anything from 25kg upward is a trade quote on 25kg and up.

How to compare two cocoa mass quotes properly

Price per kilogram on its own is close to meaningless. Five things make two quotes comparable.

• Fat content. Mass at 50 percent fat and mass at 55 percent fat are not the same purchase, because the difference is cocoa butter you would otherwise be buying separately. Ask for the figure, not the range.
• Whether a batch Certificate of Analysis comes with it. A COA is the batch-level lab result. If one supplier includes one and the other does not, you are pricing two different levels of risk, and we have written up why a batch COA settles it separately.
• Format and pack size. Block, chipped or repacked, and what the minimum is.
• Where the stock is and what the lead time is. UK-held and shipping this week is a different product from origin-loading in six weeks, whatever the per-kilo figure says.
• Origin, stated properly. Single-origin means one country and one flavour profile. A blend rotating between suppliers can be cheaper and will move under you between batches.

Run those five against any quote, ours included, and the cheap number often stops being the cheap number.

Working with mass: the practical starting points

Melt gently. Mass is solid at room temperature and liquid above roughly 35 degrees Celsius, so it wants steady low heat rather than a blast.

For a bar, melt the mass, add cocoa butter to reach your fat target, then add sweetener. Refine in a melanger to bring particle size down, then temper through a controlled cycle, roughly 45 to 50 degrees to melt out, down to about 27 degrees to seed, then back up to 31 to 32 degrees to work, which is what sets the stable Form V crystal and gives you snap and gloss.

For ganache, mass gives a deeper, less sweet chocolate note than couverture at the same weight, so expect to re-balance sugar. For baking, it melts into batters cleanly where you want intense unsweetened chocolate rather than the softened flavour a finished couverture brings.

Store it cool and dry, below 20 degrees Celsius and no more than 60 percent relative humidity, away from strong odours.

Where our mass comes from

Our mass is single-origin Ghana, produced at our partner facility in Tema from COCOBOD-supplied beans. The beans are fermented, sun-dried and roasted, then shelled and micro-ground. Nothing is added: no sugar, no fillers, no processing aids.

A typical batch runs around 52 percent cocoa butter, with fineness at 99.7 percent through 75 microns. Every batch ships with its own Certificate of Analysis covering fat, moisture, pH, fineness, free fatty acids, ash and a full microbiological panel, so you read the actual figures for the batch in front of you rather than a headline typical. Ask for the COA with your sample and check it against your own specification. The facility is certified to ISO 22000:2018 for food safety and ISO 9001:2015 for quality management; those certificates belong to the facility that produces the mass, not to CocoaFoundry as a company, and we describe them that way deliberately.

One piece of current context worth knowing if provenance matters to your customers: Ghana's Parliament passed the Cocoa Board Bill on 31 July 2026, legislation that sets out a formula-based share of the export price for farmers. It is a passed bill awaiting presidential assent rather than law already in force, and we will describe it that way until that changes.

Stock is held at our UK hub in Chelmsford and small quantities ship from there. On a larger order we will give you an honest lead time rather than a delivery date we cannot hold.

FAQ

What is cocoa mass?
Cocoa mass is the whole roasted cocoa bean, shelled and ground into a smooth paste that solidifies at room temperature. It contains cocoa solids and cocoa butter in their natural ratio, typically 50 to 55 percent fat, and it is the base ingredient of all dark chocolate.

Is cocoa mass the same as chocolate liquor?
Yes. Cocoa mass, cocoa liquor and chocolate liquor are three names for the same product. There is no alcohol in any of them; "liquor" refers to the liquid state during grinding.

Is cocoa mass the same as cocoa powder?
No. Cocoa mass holds the full fat of the bean, roughly 50 to 55 percent. Cocoa powder is what remains after that fat is pressed out and carries only 10 to 12 percent residual fat. They behave differently in every recipe.

Why do cocoa mass prices vary so much?
Because the price is built from the world cocoa price in dollars, the sterling exchange rate, the pack format, freight and duty, and whether the stock is already landed in the UK. Any one of those can move without the others.

Why is cocoa mass sold on a quote rather than a published wholesale price?
Because a published trade price would be out of date within weeks. Quoting against the volume, format and week is the honest way to price a material whose main input moves daily. Retail and small trade packs are listed publicly; trade volumes are quoted.

Read the quote, not just the number

If you are pricing cocoa mass this month, ask any supplier for the fat figure, the batch COA, the pack format and where the stock physically is. Four questions, and they turn a per-kilogram number into something you can actually compare.

Email team@cocoafoundry.co.uk for a sample and the accompanying COA, or wholesale@cocoafoundry.co.uk for a trade quote on 25kg and up. No minimum on a first order.