Shipping cocoa beans grown in Ghana, the world’s second-largest producer, to the U.K. will cost 8.3 percent more in the current crop season, according to a unit of the board that oversees the industry.

The charge to haul Ghanaian beans to the English ports of Tilbury and Felixstowe and to Dublin rose 3 pounds to 39 pounds ($62) a metric ton for the 2012-13 season begun Oct. 1, a document from Accra, Ghana-based Cocoa Marketing Co. e-mailed today showed. Dutch, Belgian and German cargoes will gain 10 percent to 53 euros ($68) a ton from 48 euros last season.

The chocolate ingredient is normally hauled at sea in 20- foot steel containers by shipping companies including Copenhagen-based A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, owner of the world’s largest container line. Freight rates from Ghana, where the cocoa market is state-controlled, are negotiated annually between shippers and Cocoa Marketing Co.

Carrying Ghanaian beans to the Spanish port of Barcelona and Trieste in Italy will cost 60 euros a ton, up from 55 euros last season, according to the document. Shipping rates rose to $100 a ton for Japan and $95 a ton for both Korea and Singapore, increasing by $8 in each case.

Ghana’s cocoa harvest may fall 11 percent to 800,000 tons in the current season amid concern about adverse weather, Noah Amenyah, a spokesman for the Ghana Cocoa Board, said Sept. 12. Cocoa Marketing Co. is a unit of the board, its website shows.

The cost of shipping products such as cocoa butter to the U.K. and Dublin rose 3 pounds to 43 pounds a ton, according to the document. Cocoa butter accounts for as much as 20 percent of the weight of a chocolate bar, according to Commodities Risk Analysis LC, a cocoa-research company based in New York.

To contact the reporter on this story: Isis Almeida in London at ialmeida3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net