(Businessweek) – Cocoa rose to a two-week high in New York and sugar advanced for the first time in seven days on signs of too much and too little wet weather disrupting crops.
Rain has been below normal in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s largest cocoa growers, since June 10, according to Kevin Marcus, founder of the commodity weather consulting company Marcus Weather in Passaic, New Jersey. Sucden do Brasil, a unit of Sucrees et Denrees SA, lowered its estimate of Brazil’s sugar cane crop due to too much rain.
Cocoa for September delivery rose 0.3 percent to $2,237 a metric ton by 6:45 a.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York and earlier today climbed to $2,250, the most since June 17. Cocoa in London rose as much as 0.7 percent to the highest price since June 13.
Raw sugar for October delivery gained 0.2 percent to 16.45 cents a pound on ICE, the first increase since June 25. Sucden lowered its 2013-14 estimate for Brazil’s center-south cane crop to 575 million tons from 585 million tons, Jeremy Austin, general manager at Sucden do Brasil, said in an interview in London today.
Arabica coffee climbed 0.9 percent to $1.225 a pound on ICE. White, or refined, sugar climbed 0.4 percent to $477.20 a ton and robusta coffee was unchanged at $1,820 a ton.
