German retailers rationing sugar

FRANKFURT: Some German retailers are limiting the amount of sugar that customers can buy to 4 kilogrammes per purchase due to a shortage, weekly magazine Focus reported, without citing sources.

"Our outlets can decide how much they limit sales," the magazine cited Germany's biggest food retailer Edeka as saying in an excerpt of an article to be published on Monday.

Edeka was not immediately available for comment on Sunday. The magazine said the rising price of sugar around the world was making it less attractive for sugar producers to sell their goods in the European Union, where prices are regulated.

It also said the EU was temporarily raising quotas for the bloc's sugar makers to meet demand, without citing sources.

White sugar prices have surged by more than 50 percent over the past year, with the futures price for Liffe August white sugar contracts exceeding $690 per tonne this week.

Dealers talked of pent-up cash demand for refined sugar due to the slow start to the cane harvest in the centre-south of Brazil, a slowdown in white sugar exports from India, and political upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East.

Copyright Reuters, 2011