SINGAPORE: Queensland Sugar (QSL), Australia's biggest sugar exporter, is expected to import 1 million tonnes of raw sugar from July this year to June 2012 to meet sales commitments after a cyclone decimated the country's output, its chairman said on Thursday.
This is in addition to the one million tonnes of raw sugar QSL imported earlier this year, after tropical cyclone Yasi slammed the northern Queensland coast, where about one-third of the country's cane is grown.
"We expect that during the next 12 months, we need to continue to buy sugar from Brazil and Thailand in particular. Guatemala is another origin that we'll be keen to try to develop," Alan Winney, chairman of QSL, Australia said on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore.
In the next 12 months, we expect it will be 1 million tonnes plus again because of the shortfall in the Australian crop," he said.
He added that the sugar bought earlier this year primarily came from Brazil and Thailand for sale to customers in Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and China.
He expects Australian raw sugar exports in 2011/12 to be at around 2.2 million tonnes, unchanged from the previous crop year.
He said Australia is the world's third-largest raw sugar exporter, with Queensland Sugar accounting for up to 95 percent of the country's total exports.
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