Sugar Waiting at Brazil’s Ports Declined 9.4% in the Past Week

(Bloomberg) – The amount of sugar waiting to be loaded at the main ports in Brazil, the largest producer, dropped 9.4 percent in the past week, according to data from shipping agency Williams Servicos Maritimos Ltda.

About 2.3 million metric tons of sugar were ready for loading yesterday at the ports of Paranagua and Santos, the country’s biggest, data from Recife, Brazil-based Williams Brasil e-mailed yesterday showed. That compares with about 2.5 million tons a week earlier. Most of the sugar was heading to China, India and Canada, the data showed.

About 7 percent, or 163,155 tons, of all the sugar waiting loading was heading to India, the second-biggest producer and largest consumer. Imports of sugar for domestic consumption and for domestic refining to export later are “beginning to make sense,” Peter de Klerk, an analyst at Czarnikow Group Ltd., which traded sugar in 90 countries last year, said on Aug. 9.

India’s monsoon, which brings 70 percent of the country’s rainfall, was 15 percent of the 50-year average yesterday, theIndia Meteorological Department said. Its crop will be 24 million tons in the season that starts Oct. 1, down from 26 million tons a year earlier, according to Armajaro Trading Group Ltd., a London-based supplier of sugar, cocoa and coffee.

White, or refined, sugar for October delivery fell 0.8 percent to $560.60 a ton by 5:19 p.m. on NYSE Liffe in London. Raw sugar for October delivery was down 0.3 percent at 20.23 cents a pound on ICE Futures U.S. in New York.

To contact the reporters on this story: Isis Almeida in London at Ialmeida3@bloomberg.net] Jessica Abrahams in London at jabrahams7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at Ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net.