Sugar Output to Rise to Two-Year High in Brazil Regio

(Businessweek) – Sugar output in Brazil’s Center South, the world’s largest producing region, will rise to the highest in two years as crops recover from damage caused by bad weather, researcher Datagro Ltd. said.

Sugar output is estimated at 33.8 million metric tons for the crop year that starts April 1, Plinio Nastari, president of Barueri, Brazil-based Datagro said of the firm’s first estimate for production of the sweetener in the coming harvest. It will climb from 31.2 million tons in the year ending March 31, he told reporters today in Sao Paulo.

Cane output in the region that produces about 90 percent of Brazil’s sugar and ethanol will be higher than expected after plantations recovered from freezing weather last year and a drought in 2010.

Growers in the Center South will harvest 518.3 million tons of sugar cane in the coming crop, more than the 460 million to 515 million estimated in a Nov. 21 report, Nastari said. The region produced 493 million tons of sugar cane in the crop year ending this month.

Ethanol output in the region is forecast at 21.8 billion liters for the next crop, up from 20.6 billion liters. The region will turn 48.9 percent of its sugar cane into sweetener and the remainder into ethanol, up from 48.3 percent in the current crop year.

Brazil, which accounts for about half of global shipments of sugar, will export 26.35 million tons of the sweetener in the next crop, Nastari said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lucia Kassai in Sao Paulo at lkassai@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net