Cocoa stocks pile up at Takoradi port

ACCRA, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Hundreds of cocoa trucks are queued up, waiting to be unloaded at Ghana's second port of Takoradi as warehouses are full, the Ghana News Agency (GNA) reported on Tuesday.

``All the available space in the 32,000 tonnes capacity warehouse at the port has been filled up,'' Takoradi port director Captain J.E. Quansah told GNA.

He said about 250 trucks loaded with cocoa were parked in and around Takoradi's port zone. Some had been there for up to two months, he said.

Queues build up at Takoradi almost every year. At one point in January 1997 around 100 trucks plus a string of 400-tonne capacity Ghana Railway Corp wagons had to wait weeks to be off-loaded.

The danger of mould looms if the cocoa is not shipped before the beginning of the main rainy season, cocoa industry sources said.

The main rainy season usually starts in March but it might start earlier this year due to an atypical weather pattern in West Africa in the wake of last year's El Nino phenomenon.