Sugar moves up

Sugar futures rose on Friday on jitters over possible production delays in the world's most important sugar growing area, the centre-south region of Brazil. The other softs markets lost ground amid broad weakness in the commodity sector. New York's May raw sugar contract on ICE rose 0.11 cent to close at 24.96 cents per lb and London May white sugar futures jumped $7.10 or over 1 percent to end at $653.10 a tonne.
News that Brazil's sugar harvest faces a late start boosted the nearby contracts in London and New York, said Mike McDougall, senior vice president of brokerage Newedge USA in New York. On Wednesday, Brazil industry group Unica said the 2012/13 centre-south cane crushing season will start almost two weeks later than average.
The delay would provide the "underlying reason" why Cargill took delivery of over 880,000 tonnes of sugar as the March contract in New York expired this week, McDougall said. "Cargill has a long track record of taking big deliveries, and must be confident of finding homes for the sugar," said Stefan Uhlenbrock, analyst with F.O. Licht.
Cocoa futures were weaker. US beans were down in range-bound trading as the dollar firmed, dipping along with the commodity complex and feeling pressure from the firm pound against the US dollar. The benchmark May contract initially moved higher, then met resistance at the 100-day moving average around $2,392 per tonne and took further pressure from hedging, dealers said.
ICE May cocoa was down $32, or 1.35 percent, to close at $2,334 a tonne. London May cocoa declined 9 pounds to settle at 1,495 pounds per tonne. "The dollar is going up, which is softening New York (ICE) a little bit," a London-based cocoa futures broker said. Benchmark Liffe May robusta futures were up $2 to end at $2,020 per tonne. May arabicas in New York dropped 2.30 cents to settle at $2.018 per lb. Arabica futures have failed to garner any upward momentum since falling sharply in mid February, causing some chart-based dealers to sell, they said. Coffee is facing pressure from expectations of a big crop in top producer Brazil.