Ghana’s State Cocoa Processor Still Struggling for Survival After Five Years of Losses and an Endless Battle

The Cocoa Processing Company Limited (CPC), Ghana’s flagship state-owned processor, continues to face a turbulent financial journey that raises difficult questions about its survival and the sustainability of state-backed enterprises. 

Despite its strategic role in Ghana’s cocoa value chain, the company has posted persistent losses for at least five consecutive years, with mounting liabilities and recurring cash flow difficulties threatening its very foundation.

The concern is not just about red ink on the balance sheet. CPC’s struggles have broader implications for the government’s vision of value addition to cocoa before export, as well as for jobs and investor confidence. 

While cocoa remains Ghana’s single largest foreign exchange earner, the company meant to spearhead local processing is bleeding heavily and depends more on bailouts than on internally generated strength. The story told by its financial statements between 2021 and 2025 paints a worrying picture of systemic distress.

The losses began deep in 2021, when the company reported a net loss of $15.09 million. That figure improved slightly in 2022 to a still-heavy $12.06 million. Yet beneath those numbers was a more pressing reality: by the end of 2022, current liabilities exceeded current assets by a staggering $69.34 million, and the company had defaulted on $30.2 million in loans from Absa and Prudential Banks. 

In fact, its very survival depended on a $32 million debt-to-equity conversion by COCOBOD, which reclassified loans and payables as a deposit for shares.

That intervention allowed CPC’s equity to recover from a negative $58.5 million in 2022 to a positive $10.6 million in 2023. But the recovery was cosmetic rather than operational. Revenues remained weak, cash flow from operations stayed negative, and liabilities remained substantial even after restructuring. CPC was in effect buying time, not building resilience.

By 2024, the cracks were widening again. The company reported revenues of $22.2 million in the nine months to June, but this was accompanied by a net loss of $9.57 million. Operating activities consumed cash, forcing management to rely once again on borrowings to keep the business afloat. Borrowings that year added more than $2.3 million to cash balances, masking the inability of operations to sustain the company.

The 2025 numbers underline the depth of the crisis. Revenues fell further to $16.2 million in the third quarter, a decline of almost 27 percent from the previous year, underscoring volatility in cocoa bean supply and production levels. Losses, instead of narrowing, swelled again to $10.23 million. 

Though cash balances improved marginally to $3.99 million by June 2025, this was entirely because of $1.14 million in fresh loans rather than from internally generated resources. In essence, CPC remains a company burning cash at its core while surviving on external lifelines.

The broader trend across the five years is deeply unsettling. CPC has been unable to break out of its cycle of persistent losses, its liabilities remain heavy, and its liquidity fragile. Even after COCOBOD’s extraordinary intervention in 2023, the company has slid back into financial distress. 

Each year’s results confirm that this is not a temporary downturn but a structural weakness in its business model, compounded by supply chain challenges, operational inefficiencies, and dependence on state support.

For a company meant to be the flagship of Ghana’s cocoa processing ambitions, the trend is as symbolic as it is financial. CPC embodies the risks of strategic state enterprises becoming perpetual wards of government rather than competitive players in the market. Unless there is a radical turnaround in operations, the company’s financial statements suggest that it is likely to remain in distress, with liabilities rising and revenues shrinking.

With losses persisting, liabilities mounting, and revenues declining, CPC risks becoming more of a financial burden than a national asset. 

The future of Ghana’s cocoa processing dream may well depend on whether the company can break this cycle of dependence and finally stand on its own.

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