LONDON: Cocoa prices extended gains on Tuesday, with tightness in the supply of deliverable exchange stocks lifting prices.
COCOA
* May London cocoa rose 4 pounds, or 0.24 percent, to 1,681 pounds a tonne by 1442 GMT.
* The May contract was trading at a premium of about 40 pounds to the July price, indicating a lack of deliverable exchange stocks.
* "We had a very big delivery in March. All the available stock was transferred to one or two individuals, so traders are frightened those same people will want to take more (delivery) off May and there isn't any (stock around)," one dealer said.
* The March contract expiry this month saw 120,120 tonnes of cocoa change hands. This represented the bulk of exchange stocks, which had fallen to only 117,370 tonnes on Monday.
* May New York cocoa rose $24, or 1.1 percent, to $2,240 a tonne, having posted its largest single-day percentage gain in nearly three weeks on Monday.
* Ghana harvested 675,000 tonnes of graded and sealed cocoa from its 2018/19 main crop by Feb. 28, up 8 percent from the same period last season.
* Cocoa bean arrivals at Cameroon's main port of Douala had reached 250,000 tonnes by Feb. 28 since the start of the season in August, up 19 percent from the previous season.
SUGAR
* May raw sugar rose 0.05 cents, or 0.4 percent, to 12.53 cents per lb after falling to its lowest since March 15 on Monday.
* Helping to lift sugar, higher oil prices tempted funds to buy biofuel ethanol. Rising ethanol prices tend to support sugar by prompting Brazilian cane mills to produce more of the biofuel.
* A dealer said that fundamental factors would keep sugar range-bound in the near term, with overproduction in most key regions except top producer Brazil, which is still diverting much of its cane crop to ethanol production.
* May white sugar fell $1.90, or 0.6 percent, to $330.60 a tonne.
COFFEE
* May arabica coffee rose 0.55 cents, or 0.58 percent, to 94.75 cents per lb after setting a fresh contract low on Monday.
* New York second-month coffee could fall to $0.8065 per lb in the second quarter, probably after a bounce into a resistance range of $1.0255-$1.0710, said Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.
* Coffee prices have collapsed on excess supplies, with top grower Brazil forecast to have a large 2019/20 crop.
* May robusta coffee rose $7, or 0.47 percent, to $1,505 a tonne.
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