Brazil Sugar Awaiting Loading Falls 9% Over the Past Week

September 27th, 2012

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Category: Sugar

(Businessweek) – The amount of sugar waiting to be loaded onto ships at main ports in Brazil, the world’s largest producer, fell 9 percent over the past week, according to shipping agency Williams Servicos Maritimos Ltda.

About 1.78 million metric tons awaited loading yesterday at the ports of Recife, Paranagua and Santos, the country’s biggest, data e-mailed yesterday from the Recife, Brazil-based Williams Brasil showed. That compared with 1.95 million tons a week earlier, according to the shipping agency.

Vessels headed to Algeria would take 178,000 tons of the raw sweetener and another 43,700 tons were heading to Nigeria. Both countries have sugar-refining businesses, buying the raw sweetener to process it into the white variety. White sugar is about $113 a ton costlier than the raw sweetener, an increase of 28 percent so far this year, data on Bloomberg show.

Refineries are “attracted by high whites premium levels,”Nick Penney, a senior trader at broker Sucden Financial Ltd. in London, wrote in a report e-mailed yesterday, referring to the price difference between white and raw sugars. The white premium“shows no sign of weakening for the present,” he said.

Sugar output in Brazil’s center south, the country’s main producing region, rose 14 percent from a year earlier to 3.14 million tons in the first half of this month as mostly dry weather helped harvesting, industry group Unica said on Sept. 25. Rains returned to the region last week, according to Sao Paulo-based weather forecaster Somar Meteorologia.

“In Santos, the largest sugar export port, we are facing not just the cold weather, but also rain and wind,” Luiz Carlos dos Santos Jr., head of sugar brokerage and operations at SA Commodities in Santos, said in a report dated yesterday. “All sugar operations are completely idle.”

Rain makes it difficult to load sugar onto vessels as the product is sold in bulk form and may be damaged by water.

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.

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