Sugar, cocoa and coffee climb in broad-based rebound

LONDON: Sugar, cocoa and coffee futures on ICE were higher on Monday as many commodity markets regained some ground after falling on Friday on concerns about the new Omicron coronavirus variant.

Sugar

March raw sugar rose 0.8% to 19.51 cents per lb by 1108 GMT although remained far below a 4-1/2 year high of 20.69 cents set earlier this month.

Dealers said sugar was currently dominated by trends in wider financial markets.

"The market...likely has a hefty rebound due if this latest COVID mutation proves to be manageable," Commonwealth Bank of Australia analyst Tobin Gorey said in a note.

March white sugar rose 0.3% to $503.10 a tonne.

Sugar prices slip, coffee falls from 10-year highs

Cocoa

March London cocoa rose 0.4% to 1,663 pounds a tonne, edging away from a four-month low of 1,650 pounds set on Friday.

The market had been boosted by a pick-up in demand but there remained concerns that the latest coronavirus variant could temper the recovery.

Cocoa arrivals at ports in top grower Ivory Coast had reached 667,000 tonnes by Nov. 28 since the start of the season on Oct. 1, exporters estimated on Monday, down 9.9% from 740,000 tonnes over the same period last season.

March New York cocoa was up 0.3% at $2,403 a tonne.

Coffee

March arabica coffee rose 0.7% to $2.4460 per lb by 1023 GMT. The market had climbed to a 10-year high of $2.4820 last week.

Dealers said the market continued to derive support from tightening supplies following delays to shipments from Brazil driven partly by a shortage of container shipping capacity.

January robusta coffee rose 0.3% to $2,314 a tonne.

Vietnam's coffee exports in the first 11 months of this year are expected to show a 4.4% drop from a year earlier to 1.36 million tonnes, government data released on Monday showed.