Brazil's sugarcane industry will revise its current center-south crop estimate on Thursday, which should fall in line with independent analysts that have lowered expectations for the world's leading sugar supplier recently. Today's revision is unusual for Unica which typically puts out crop numbers only a few times a year.
In July, the association lowered its sugar estimate for the current crop to 32.4 million tonnes, from a prior forecast in March of 34.6 million tonnes and last season's 33.5 million tonnes. Unica will release its biweekly crushing estimate with the new revised forecast numbers at 1400 Brasilia time (1700 GMT).
Falling estimates for the center-south crop, which accounts for 90 percent of Brazil's sugar output and is in the peak of harvest, have helped support global sugar prices. Bad weather and falling yields are behind the first drop in year-to-year cane output in a decade from Brazil, which controls half the global trade in sugar. On Tuesday, private analyst Datagro slashed its sugar estimate 5.5 percent from May numbers to 31.8 million tonnes, which helped support global futures prices.
Datagro's president, Plinio Nastari, said to expect reductions in Brazil's cane and sugar estimates through the end of the season due to frosts that induced flowering in the crop that will lower cane syrup yields. Last month the Lausanne-based consultancy Kingsman lowered its view for the center-south sugar output to 31.87 million tonnes from 32.4 million tonnes.
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