Brazil's main center-south sugar cane crush is expected to slow for the second fortnight running in the last half of October due to rains toward the end of the month, local crop analysts Safras e Mercado said on Monday. Safras estimates that mills in the region will crush 33 million tonnes of cane in the second half of October, down from 36.13 million in the first half of the month. At the same time last year, Brazil crushed 34.46 million tonnes.
This will result in 1.8 million tonnes of sugar production over the period, down from 2.09 million tonnes earlier in the month. This will put total sugar output for the season that started on April 1 at 27.15 million tonnes, down 8 percent from the 29.49 million tonnes produced last year at this time, Safras said.
Crushing since the start of the season likely reached 513.44 million tonnes, roughly on par with the 515.32 million tonnes crushed by this time a year ago. Crushing rates are likely to remain weak in early November as the main cane growing regions have already seen several days of rain that tends to suspend harvest. Mills are in a race to harvest as rains become more frequent and intense this time of year, especially under El Ni?o conditions which favour wetter weather in the cane areas. Mills are typically finished harvesting by Christmas but the industry has lost more days to rain this year and is likely to crush into January.
Comments
Comments are closed.