Brazil’s Raw Sugar Premium Seen Sliding as Demand Remains Weak

(Bloomberg) – Buyers of raw sugar from Brazil, the world’s largest producer, are getting a bigger discount for their sweetener on low demand, said Swiss Sugar Brokers.

Raw sugar for loading in October at the port of Santos, the country’s biggest, traded last week at a discount of 0.77 cent a pound to the price of the March contract on ICE Futures U.S. in New York and buyers are now looking to pay 0.9 cent a pound less than the exchange price, the Rolle, Switzerland-based broker said in a report e-mailed yesterday. That compares with a discount of 0.65 cent to 0.8 cent a week earlier.

“The second-hand market was missing the buyers,” Naim Beydoun a broker at the company, wrote in the report. Prices for sugar for immediate loading “are getting weaker each day.”

For November, raw sugar loading in Santos was at a discount of 0.72 cent to 0.85 cent a pound to the exchange price, Swiss Sugar Brokers data showed. That compares with sale offers at 0.6 cent a pound under the exchange price the previous week.

At the port of Paranagua, the country’s second-biggest, sugar was offered for sale at a discount of 0.75 cent a pound, according to the report. The sweetener traded at 0.65 cent a pound under the exchange price the previous week.

Raw sugar prices in the physical market may gain support ifIndia, China, Bangladesh and Malaysia continue to buy, Beydoun said. Ships awaiting loadings of sugar at Brazil’s main ports on Oct. 10 were scheduled to take 218,000 metric tons to Malaysia and 199,000 tons to India, according to Williams Servicos Maritimos Ltda., a shipping agency in Recife, Brazil.

Raw sugar for March delivery was down 0.5 percent at 19.96 cents a pound by 5:25 a.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. The price fell 6.9 percent last week.

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.