(Bloomberg) – Sugar fell for a third day in New York on speculation prices must decline further to erode a global surplus. Cocoa retreated.
Raw sweetener traded on ICE Futures U.S. will drop to 16.58 cents a pound this year, the mean estimate of 16 bearish traders in a survey this week at a Kingsman conference in Dubai showed, implying a 10 percent drop from current levels. Nine respondents were neutral and two were bullish. Prices may need to reach 16 cents for millers in top producer Brazil to direct more cane to making ethanol at the expense of sugar, said Jonathan Drake, chief operating officer at RCMA Commodities Asia Ltd.
“We keep hearing more bearish gossip out of Dubai,” Luiz Carlos dos Santos Jr., head of sugar brokerage and operations at SA Commodities in Santos, Brazil, said in a report e-mailed yesterday. Traders discussed a “strong chance” of prices reaching 16 cents, said the broker, who attended the gathering.
Raw sugar for delivery in March slid 0.3 percent to 18.50 cents a pound on ICE by 5:46 a.m. New York time. White, or refined, sugar for delivery in May declined 0.5 percent to $503.70 a metric ton on NYSE Liffe in London.
The neutral traders predicted a price of 19 cents a pound in 2013, according to the average of their responses in the survey. The bulls forecast a gain to 20.3 cents.
Global sugar supplies will be 6 million tons higher than demand in the 12 months starting in April, a third consecutive surplus, Carlos Murilo Barros de Mello, a managing director at Macquarie Group Ltd., Australia’s largest investment bank, said in an interview in Dubai yesterday. Current prices are still prompting farmers to expand plantings, he added.
Cocoa for delivery in March fell 0.4 percent to $2,238 a ton in New York. Cocoa for delivery in March slid 0.1 percent to 1,462 pounds ($2,289) a ton in London.
Arabica coffee for delivery in March fell 0.2 percent to $1.4375 a pound on ICE. Robusta coffee for delivery in March climbed 0.1 percent to $2,068 a ton on NYSE Liffe.
