Sugar Extends Drop in New York and London as Brazil Starts Crop
Category: Sugar
(Businessweek) – Sugar extended declines in New York and London as Brazil, the world’s largest producer, is set to start production this month and add to supplies.
About 75 mills in Brazil were probably processing the 2013-14 crop as of April 1 compared with less than 25 mills a year earlier, Sucres et Denrees SA said in a report e-mailed yesterday. That should climb to about 225 mills by mid-April with cane output at a record 589 million metric tons, it said.
“With the prospect of a bumper cane crop, most mills will start early,” Sucden said in the report. “Sugar prices are caught in a downtrending channel.”
Raw sugar for May delivery fell 0.1 percent to 17.58 cents a pound at 7:45 a.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. Prices fell 0.6 percent yesterday. White, or refined, sugar dropped 0.1 percent to $502.20 a ton, the eighth consecutive decline and the longest streak since August.
The price of hydrous ethanol in sugar terms dropped to 18.8 cents a pound yesterday from 18.9 cents on March 27, according to Lausanne, Switzerland-based researcher Kingsman SA. Brazil uses cane to make ethanol and sugar.
