Demand for cocoa among Europe's chocolate producers has shown annual growth for the first time in a year, surprising many analysts who had expected the economic crisis to maintain its grip on demand.

Europe's cocoa grind rose by 0.6% year on year to 351,316 tonnes in the last three months of 2009, the European Cocoa Association said.

The increase was the first since the same quarter a year before and represented the region's second-highest ever grind, a measure of the consumption of cocoa at companies such as Cadbury, Kraft and Nestle which are polled for the data.

Crunch impact 

The rebound, which took the grind 20% higher than in the second quarter of 2009, surprised many observers.

"The vast majority of the market had been expecting a negative number," said Eric Sivry, director and head of cocoa brokerage at Fortis Bank Nederland.

"We were waiting to see how much cocoa was impacted by the credit crunch at the end of the year. The answer was, not much."

There have been some expectations that high prices of cocoa would prompt confectionery groups to limit their consumption of beans by focusing promotional efforts on products with lower cocoa content.

Earlier this week, Swiss giant Barry Callebaut forecast a flat global chocolate market this year.

German capacity

However, some analysts have pointed to the opening of fresh processing capacity in Germany over the last year, which helped a 9.4% rise in the country's grindings in the quarter.

Factoring out German data, Europe's grindings remained narrowly lower year on year.

Cocoa for March closed up £9 at £2,297 a tonne in London and up $3 at 3.392 a tonne in New York.