Indian sugar mills shut early as drought hits cane crop

More than two dozen mills in India's top sugar producing western state of Maharashtra have stopped crushing due to cane shortage while many more mills are likely to shut before February end, a producers' body said on Tuesday. Sugar mills in Maharashtra typically operate between November and April, but this year cane supplies have fallen due to back-to-back droughts.
Out of 147 sugar mills that started operations this year, 25 mills have stopped crushing as on December 31, Indian Sugar Mills Association said in a statement. The country produced 8.09 million tonnes of the sweetener between October 1 and December 31, 0.4 percent higher than a year earlier, as crushing began few weeks earlier, it said.